Back from the mountain

We have returned from our big fat religious premarital counseling retreat weekend. It was a mess - I was really kind of disappointed by it. We came back to a dark city on Sunday night feeling exhausted, dirty, resentful, with L's glasses broken and my mood wrecked.

The retreat house, up in Poughkeepsie, looked like the hotel from "The Shining" - an imposing stone seminary built 100 years ago on the banks of the Hudson, surrounded by bare trees and stubby grass. It was creepy but interesting. There were 27 (!) couples there, and two lead couples who directed everything. Now, these couples are volunteers, and they are amazingly generous with their time and unswervingly open about their personal lives (over the course of the weekend we heard about their: battles with depression, mentally ill children, fertility troubles, financial woes, weight issues, troubling long-term arguments with their parents, resentments towards each other, and their sexual proclivities). They were very nice but hard to relate to - one couple was in the sixties and had an athletic team's worth of kids; the other was in their forties and lived in Connecticut. Neither pair really fit the mold of the hep-cat, urban-living, cool hipster-with-a-dash-of-metrosexual couple L and I plan on becoming (and frankly, to be perfectly honest, already are).

As soon as we got there we went around the circle of fiances and -cees and had to say one reason why we loved our partner. I turned to L and said, "I can't handle this." People extolled the wonders of their partners' sense of humor, generosity, warmth, selflessness, caring. I said I loved L's baking skills. It was that kind of weekend.

Basically the entire time a couple would give a talk to us about ourselves, our relationship, our future, the sacrament of marriage, the process of decision-making, religious family life, etc; then L and I would separate and write each other letters based on questions and things we were instructed to consider; then we would reconvene to meet in private and discuss these issues (or, alternatively, nap). From Friday night to Saturday night, we were good, and we made an honest, good faith effort to participate. L and I communicated in ways we usually don't; we were kind and open and loving in the written word in a way that is difficult to sustain when you are battling all of the distractions of daily life. So I am thankful that this retreat brought us closer together and gave us some insights about our commonalities and differences, our abiding love, our relationship with God, and the family we hope to create.

But then, on Saturday night, the whole thing went to hell. They started talking about birth control and natural family planning, and all of a sudden we had become these subversive rebels, like in "V for Vendetta," but instead of blowing up Parliament we wanted to hotwire a car and follow the Hudson back to the city before they made us write another got-darn letter. During the talk of natural family planning, the speakers were making some statements about contraceptives, and abortifacents, and the value of a child conceived out of wedlock that made L snort with derision and made me unable to maintain eye contact with anyone in the room. I thought what they were saying was insulting and patronizing, and wrong-headed. At that point, all of the day's frustrations came to head and they kind of lost us for the rest of the weekend. The next day, during what was supposed to be the spiritual highlight of the weekend, a renewal of our engagement promises, we couldn't even do it - I was not in the right mood, my mind was racing, and I just wanted to leave. It was sad.

So, over all, I think the curriculum of the weekend can be improved. I felt like it was a little simplistic at times, like they were assuming we had gotten engaged on a lark instead of getting engaged as the culmination of a process that took years. At times I felt like we were getting beat by a dogmatic 2 x 4, with an insulting lack of nuance or intelligence behind the explanations. Sometimes it was very New Agey and schmoopy, and there seemed to be an expectation of such blatant openness that I just couldn't sustain. I don't feel comfortable opening up about the dynamics of my relationship with people I don't know. I don't want to hug people I don't know. I don't want to be told what to do by people I don't know.

We were making jokes the entire weekend about our dismal plight - the monotony of the sessions, the frustration of not being able to go anywhere or really break new ground with our conversation. There weren't many new ideas introduced. L and I always took our engagement seriously, and we know the depth of the commitment we are preparing to make. But the retreat was disappointing, and sad, all the same. I tried to make the most of it, for the first 24 hours at least, so in large part it's my failure. But the resentment and disappointment and relief we felt on that train ride back to the city are not emotions I plan on bringing up to the altar.

Spiritual thing

This weekend L and I are going on our pre-marriage counseling weekend-long retreat. Around the house, we've been calling it Celibacy Weekend 2006. Yep, thanks to the church's requirement that we unflinchingly examine all the quirks and contours of our relationship, we will be talking about "us" for 48 whole hours. I don't know if we even have that much to say. I haven't been on a religious retreat in a long time, and L and I are not exactly the most spiritual of couples. I would more describe our relationship as "secular humanist." But I have high hopes for this weekend. If nothing else, hopefully we'll have some good stories coming out of it. I get on the train in two hours, and I won't be back until Sunday afternoon. Stay tuned.

RIng of power

We bought my wedding ring this weekend. We went back to Tiffany and were helped by a nice chick our age named Veronica. I was trying a bunch of different rings on, including some with decorative flourishes like gilding around the edges. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. "Well, you have slender fingers," Veronica said hesitantly. "So that ring looks a little --" "Gay?" I offered. "Feminine," she said. "Yes," L agreed. No need to go gay for my wedding, but we picked out a good one. It's gold, yellow gold, pretty plain and simple, a nice weight, a certain heft to it, but classic and unpossessing. We will get it engraved with something nice. Right now it's sitting in a box on our shelf, wrapped in paper and tied up in a bow. I have never been more covetous and lustful of a piece of jewelry before. It's kind of like the Lord of the Rings ring, in terms of its significance and power over me and the way it holds my attention, but hopefully this ring will work out better for everyone involved. Hooray for matrimony!

Women we love: that Pussycat Doll

I think her name is Nicole. She's the lead "singer." I would never have expected to really enjoy the music of the Pussycat Dolls, given that their music sounds like classic bubblegum factory pop, but it turns out I do. I liked their second song, "Stickwitu," which actually means "I want to stick with you," but they're too busy and globe-trotting to say all that. It was a pretty sweet ballad, and it had some random harmonica moments that for me really unified the song and elevated it above the Ugg-wearing dreck of your Ashlees and Lindsays and Allies and AJ's. And their new song, "Beep," is a very "My Humps"-like song with spare production, catchy lyrics, and a really awesome beat. The music comes in and out and it's unpredictable and it's fantastic.

I have never heard the Dolls' music on the radio, so I have only gotten to know them through their music videos. And that's where Nicole comes in. She's beautiful, she has a pleasant voice, she has a smile that lights up the room, and she's a good dancer. Let's be honest, the other Pussycat Dolls are window-dressing. I mean, there's the redhead, the short black chick, eight or ten blondes, and the one with the pegleg. And then there's sweet, radiant, smiling Nicole. For seeming to be pleasant, for heading up a group that I have no business enjoying, for dancing well, for misspelling "definitelty" as "definately" on her official Pussycat Dolls website blog - she is a woman we love.

Night work

I just came back to New York this afternoon, and I feel really good about my time at home. I ate a lot of good food and slept a ton, and managed to be pretty darn lazy for a couple days without incurring the wrath of my industrious parents. They work harder than anyone else - even when they are "relaxing," they are slaving away in the yard pooper-scooping or rotating the shrubs or something. I don't know.

We watched "Walk the Line" with my grandparents, which was very interesting because they were around when all of those events transpired. I wonder what it's like to see all these pretty twenty-something actors recreate an era of your youth. Is it accurate? Does it matter? How is it to see something you genuinely knew become something fictional?

I was thinking about my grandparents, and I was thinking about this amazing short story collection I just read, Judy Budnitz's "Nice Big American Baby," and I started to write. I thought about a sentence my grandma had said over the course of the weekend and I went from there. My only goal was to create something suspenseful and realistic. I used geography from my childhood and names from my family. In Budnitz's work, she takes a weird or creepy or supernatural premise and just follows it through, but in a very spare way. It's like in fashion when they try to get away with as little fabric as possible to make a dress - or, alternatively, revealing skin you never expected to see to begin with. Budnitz does the same thing with her writing: using a few broad strokes to create a frame and letting the reader fill in the rest, or placing the whole weight of a concept on a few lines of dialogue, trusting the reader to come in and add something more vivid than the writer herself could create.

That sounds high-falutin'. But basically after three nights of work I wrote a little story that I kind of like, so I'm going to spend the next few days revising it. I creeped myself out writing it, so I guess that's a good sign. It feels so good to write something fictional - to create my own world with its own characters, and to try to at least do it well enough on the terms I choose to construct it with.

Last night in bed I was fantasizing about seeing my fiction published in the New Yorker - I could picture my name in their font, I could see myself listed as a contributor. Hot fantasy, eh??

Marietta

I am in McLean now, after my whirlwind trip to Charlottesville. After a few visits back to my old haunts, I think I can safely say that I love that town, but not enough to live there. With that said, here is the weirdest and most memorable thing that happened:

One of the attendees of the big party last night was our fun friend Kim, who brought along a friend of hers from Marietta, Ohio, who, for the purposes of disparagement and mockery, I shall call "Marietta." It turns out she is married but her husband wasn't there. During the party she emphatically gave me a lot of unsolicited advice about how to be married. "Always communicate," she blathered. "You want to head things off at the pass. Make sure things are totally out there."

"Yeah, that's really important," I would say, nodding. I was trying to make eye contact with someone else, and pretending to be deeply interested in the label on my beer bottle. "Is your husband here tonight?"

"He lives in North Dakota." Marietta's husband lived in North Dakota, while Marietta, for those of you keeping score, lives in Ohio. They were married a few months ago, and he lives out in freaking North Dakota for some job-related reason. Awesome.

Later that night, around 1, several of us went to go out dancing for a few hours. In the taxi on the way there, Marietta was seriously trying to put some moves on me. She was drunk as a skunk. "Since we're both married, this is ok," she slurred at me. Her breath was like Cheezits and beer. "All right," I said, trying to extract myself. She was trying to intertwine her fingers with mine, so I gave her a platonic pat on the shoulder and sort of shoved her away. "No, really, it's ok," she whispered. It was not ok.

On the dance floor she was all over me, as well as my friend Greg. Grinding her butt towards us, grabbing at our hands and leading us in awkward turns and twists, trying to make deep eye contact and allure us with gawky arm movements and arrhythmic pelvic thrusts. "No, this is ok," she would say when violently tried t0 get away from her. "Don't you think this is ok?"

It was so gross. This was the worst married person I had ever seen. I spent the whole night avoiding her and ignoring her overtures. A couple points: 1) I did not want to dance with her. 2) I did not want to commit some kind of premature adultery to my beloved sober fiancee, L. 3) I did not want to aid or abet in the eventual destruction of Marietta's own marriage. It was really sad and horrifying.

On our way out of the club, at 4:30 in the morning, our group was gradually crossing the street in the hopes of getting a taxi. After watching Marietta assault the males all night, Kim told Kateri that Marietta actually had a husband. "Marietta, you're married?" she yelled across the street. The girl nodded and said she was married. Kateri looked incredulous: "To who?"

Time travel

In two hours I'm getting on a train for Washington, then I'm getting on another train and heading straight down to Charlottesville. Spring Break just started and I'm going back to Cville for a birthday party at Kateri's house, in honor of the 5th anniversary of our friend Jenn's 21st birthday. I feel like i'm going back in time - I'm going to see people I haven't seen in years (Greg, Kim, even Jenn and Kateri and others too), for a house party featuring beer pong and flip cup, in a town I knew and loved years ago. I won't have a car, I won't have Lillian. It feels like I'm moving back in time five or six years. I'm looking forward to it, and also looking forward to the long weekend at home I'm going to enjoy before I come back to the city.

I've been thinking a lot about why I've been so angry and frustrated lately, and I think getting out of here will do me a world of good. I'm excited to step back and take a breath. A nice train ride this afternoon, with a fresh New Yorker and a good dinner and some good beer waiting for me at the other end - is a great way to start. See you back home.

Rage

Saturday night should have been lovely. I had a great dinner with Ashesh and then came home to putter around the apartment and do some schoolwork. Next weekend I am going home, and I am trying to finagle a trip down to Charlottesville on Friday - a trip that requires me to get from Manhattan to Cville in an afternoon. I was looking online at a bunch of different websites - Travelocity, Amtrak, Expedia, American Airlines, and nothing was working. The train I was looking for seemed to be nonexistent; the customer service people wouldn't tell me my frequent flier password, even when I was patient and courteous as I was tranferred through outsourced customer service personnel from Mumbai to Guajrat. And on top of all that, the DVR that L had installed that very day had somehow messed up our cable signal, so the television was unwatchable and I had to miss Saturday Night Live. And, I had to prepare for a law school presentation on Sunday that I had to wear a suit for and do homework for on a Saturday night. I started getting angry.

"What the FUCK," I said. L was in the kitchen area and I was stalking around the living room, surrounded by old bills, hastily-scrawled phone numbers, useless television remote controls, and a deadening sense of rage. I hung up after talking to another bitchy old cow in customer service and was at that level of anger where you almost start crying. I was incredibly frustrated and made up a mental list of things I hated at that moment: 1) law school; 2) Amtrak; 3) American Airlines; 4) "customer" "service"; 5) outsourcing to people whose language skills are not quite up to par. "God DAMN IT," I hissed at my cellphone. "I hate this shit so much" -- my Tourette's outburst was in full swing at this point -- "fuck everything, I am SO SICK of this SHIT." I looked around at the shambles of my life and heard the heater barking and tapping crazily. "God, why is it so hot, it's the fucking WINTERTIME," I bellowed, ripping my fleece off. "It's like a FUCKING SAUNA in here!"

I'm not used to being enraged around other people. L actually didn't enjoy my outburst and left to go on a walk. I stayed behind to sulk and consider ways I might be a more considerate and less Hulk-like roommate. I turned the heat off. And now our apartment has a cute new nickname: "the fucking sauna."

Book review: "The Underminer"

I am currently reading a fantastic book called "The Underminer: Or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life," by Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan. The book takes the form of a series of one-sided conversations spanning fifteen years in the relationship of the nameless protagonist and the Underminer - a friend who is always just a little smarter, a little better-looking, a little more accomplished, yet is blindingly oblivious and completely scathing in his relationship to you. This is the friend who makes you feel like crap.

I am loving this book because it is hysterical and just so damn cutting. James got it to me for my birthday, after I almost got it for him for his birthday, and it is perfect. Because if there's anyone whose life I am sort of casually destroying, it's James. And I am sure he would say the same of me. Anyways, here's an email I sent him trying to imitate the utterly inimitable "Underminer" style. This book is highly recommended.

James?

Wow, I can’t believe you still have a hotmail email account! That’s so funny! Man, I thought like only high schoolers had those. I mean, most people I know have emails from their graduate schools or their investment banks, but that’s great. Like, my email address is at Fordham. You know, because I go to law school there. But that’s really fun that you still have a hotmail account. You were always so crazy!

So you want to watch “the Bachelor” finale tonight? I didn’t know anyone who actually watched that show! I mean, I guess I’m just more into art galleries and international fiction, but that is just so funny. I always thought it was like these illiterate fat red-staters who watched trash like “the Bachelor,” but now I guess you do too! Well, it does kind of make sense. You were always really into popular culture and following the group.

That’s so funny how you’re exactly the same as always. Good ol’ James – you were never one to change or grow or develop! So different from the rest of us!

Happy birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. Today I am sitting in the library at school getting ready to go home and I am feeling the effects of last night: I am aware of the weight of my own head. My eyes feel beady and small. I am unshaven. I am wearing glasses. My stomach, occasionally, will roil.

But yesterday was awesome. L and I woke up at 6:40 and trudged up to Central Park, and I ran in a four-mile race and was pleasantly suprised by my time of 31:00 minutes (7:45 per mile for those of you keeping score at home -- I thought I would be in the mid-8:00's, so this was an unexpected gift). We came home and weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves, since we were showered and clean and breakfast-laden and informed by the newspaper, all by 10:30 in the morning. We walked around the village in the afternoon, made an obligatory pilgrimage to Chipotle, saw Philip Seymour Hoffman on the sidewalk with his girlfriend and kid, not seeming exceptionally paternal, and went to some bookstores and bought L new running shoes.

Later I went to strength conditioning and step class, and because I'm such a birthday glutton, when my smooth and attractive teacher asked me how I was doing and what was going on, I blurted out, "It's my birthday!" and she announced it to the larger group much to humiliation, especially in the step part when she said, "It's Michael's birthday and I think he deserves some bigger sashays! Let's give Michael some bigger sashays, people!" I actually prayed for sweet death at that moment, because of all the things I intended to do on my birthday, I am not sure if sashaying was or should have been on that list. But if a part of maturing is not caring about what other people think and a general willingness to be embarassed, I guess that was helpful.

We had an awesome dinner at Westville, where the lovely waitress and I were both grooving to "That's the way love goes," and then we went to Buddha, where I saw a lot of my friends and had a great time, exactly what I wanted. We rounded out the night at French Roast over some liquoured-up coffee and fancy pizza, and now here I am.

I am very happy to be 26. My life is going really well and I can't imagine having any more to be thankful for or excited about. I heard from a lot of people I love yesterday and that was the best part. I didn't hear from my grandparents, which was really disappointing, but it's not something to dwell on. I don't know - birthdays for me are double-edged, or at least they have a strong shadow underlying the substance. I mean, it's a celebration and a time for assessment and a chance to think about who you love and where you're going, but at the same time, it can also be a chance to be disappointed. But beyond the birthday, my life is going really well and I am certainly aware and grateful of the good fortune of it all. I am so, so lucky.

The plan

Friends,

This Saturday is my 26th birthday, and to celebrate my lost youth and innocence, we're going out. We'll be heading to the Buddha Lounge, which is a lively, smooth spot on the Lower East Side, and I would love it if you could join. We'll probably get there around 10:30 or 11. (Address and directions are below.)

I would love to see you, as no birthday is complete without celebratory drinking and awkward, impaired dancing with the people you love. And believe me, we will have all of the above.

Hope to see you Saturday-

Michael

Buddha Lounge
29 E. 3rd St., between 2d Avenue and Bowery
Look for the sign with the red Buddha on it
(212) 505-7344
Subway: take the F or V to 2nd Ave (or walk from Astor Place)

Neighbors

Our oven hasn't been working ever since we moved into the apartment. Our landlord, Bill, has tried diligently to get the repair guys to come, but when they do, they mess around with all the dials and tubes and wires, but they don't actually fix it. Apparently this is due to union regulations, I don't know. So Bill has been trudging to our apartment sporadically to let the repair guy in and watch him fiddle with knobs, or, alternatively, wait for the repair guy to come and then get stood up by him. It's a system that works for everyone. (Although Bill did give us an awesome gift certificate to a great restaurant to make up for it, so I'm a happy camper. Plus, the only thing I need the oven for, really, is storage space.)

So last night I was in the bathroom, perusing the latest issue of Newsweek as ... you know. Right. So the intercom buzzes, and I assume it's just someone trying to get into the building, as I don't expect any visitors. (Do you see where this is going?) I continue reading an especially incisive column by Jonathan Alter when there is knock on the door. I decide to ignore it, considering I am indisposed. Then I hear Bill's voice outside and the rustle of keys. All the blood in my body hurtles to my face. Uh oh. "One minute!" I croak.

No response, and now I hear the telltale jingling of keys. The front door opens. I hastily throw the Newsweek aside. "One second!" I yell. "One second!" Shit! Shit! My body goes through a million different kinds of stress as I ... make myself presentable. Hands dripping from the sink, the magazine stuffed behind the toilet, I walk out and open the front door. There's Bill and the repair guy, Russell. "I'm sorry, you caught me in the restroom!" I say as jovially as possible. I shake hands with the men and give them a look that says: please believe that my hands aren't wet because I peed on them.

They come in and Russell goes to town twiddling with the oven. He ventured into it from the top down, dismantling the stove and then working his way in. Other neighbors pass by the open door, and Bill offers a few choice tidbits about them. The nice people who live across from me are Scientologists. So don't go to them for advil. And Bill himself has been playing piano in a jazz band for 40 years, and they play every Monday night at a bar around the corner.

After they had all left, and the oven seemed to be working, I returned to the bathroom so that my intestinal tract could try to make some sense out of the extreme psychological trauma it had been through. But as I reflected in my favorite room of the apartment, I thought: you know, this is why you love where you live - a landlord who is a regularly performing musician and scientologists across the hall. Unbelievable.

Women we love: Beyonce

I am up to my neck in the horrible process of writing an appellate brief, so what better way to prime my mental powers for some razor-sharp legal reasoning than blogging about why I like Beyonce:

Beyonce's new movie, "The Pink Panther," looks incredibly bad, the kind of bad that only Steve Martin in his latter-day "family" "friendly" mode could spit out. But her new song, "Check on it," featuring some disposable Southern rapper, is kind of awesome. It's the kind of song I didn't like at first, when I actually heard it, but when I saw the video I really starting digging it. It's got that trademark Beyonce quick delivery, and I think she even rhymes "patient" with "abrasive." The video features like eight different versions of the woman: ghetto B, switching her hips and smacking her gum; upper east side B, wearing a big ol' sweater and looking cute; B in a wig; B dancing in a dress; B dancing in jeans; etc. Plus there's this one point where she does this bizarre Matrix move where she dips back and reaches the ground with her hands. Was that an animatronic move? Or did she have some vertebrae removed?

But the best part of the song is the penultimate line in the chorus, when she says: "Dip it pop it twerk it stop it check on me tonight." You know, I once twerked it for L during an intimate moment and it didn't go well - she felt uncomfortable and I was mortified for weeks. But if it works for Beyonce, more power to her.

So, the woman had a great voice, she's got some amazing curves, she's easy on the eyes, she writes songs with quick lyrics, she is unreasonably flexible, and she offers music that makes you want to move your hips. If that isn't enough reason to love a woman, I don't know what is.

Drama review: "Doubt"

Tonight L and I saw the Tony- and Pulitzer-award winning play, "Doubt." It's about the clash between a priest and a nun in the Bronx in 1964, when the church is in the middle of the upheaval of Vatican II and this particular nun is convinced that the priest is molesting a student at their school. Suspicions and conjectures start to reflect the changing times, the clash of sexes within the church hierarchy, and the fears and horrors that no one can really bring themselves to articulate. It was an amazing play, with the crackling dialogue and a lot to consider. (Not to mention a spectacularly obnoxious audience - intermittently beeping cellphones, crumpling candy wrappers, and the woman next to L who felt the need to complete the actors' lines for them. After she loudly announced the actual very last word of the play, I leaned over and brisky asked her to be quiet. A good moment.)

I was thinking, though - between this play, an article in the current New Yorker about the church's depiction of Mary Magdalene as a whore through the ages, and a book I read by Karen Armstrong about her experiences as a disenchanted ex-nun - I am feeling a little cynical about religion. The common theme that emerges is that the men in power make doctrines that will keep them in power and ensure the status quo. A question I keep returning to is why we expect leaders of the church to make such drastic and bizarre sacrifices - to abandon elements of their innate humanity like sexuality and the need for companionship - to somehow better prepare them for spiritual leadership.

I want to refresh myself and feel good about religion as this wedding of mine rolls around, but so far I still feel pretty disenchanted with the whole thing. So much of the doctrine has been manipulated through the ages, so many horrible things are done in the spirit of people's misplaced certainties. But maybe I need to let go of some of the irony and cynicism to see beyond it. I don't know.

Put your back into it

So it's almost halfway through the month and I have yet to update this beloved blog of mine with February's exploits. I have been working hard at law school, incrementally preparing for the wedding, trying to improve the subtle aspects of cohabitation, looking for something to keep me busy over the summer, enjoying a new season of "Survivor," and considering the implications of my bday in two weeks, but the whole month maybe just boils down to:

Hurting my back at the gym.

This happened last saturday. I went for a two-hour block of manly exercise, namely, total body conditioning followed by step. (My relationship to step class is a Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. It's like going out dancing, it's like learning how to enjoy house music, it's like line dancing, it's like making a fool of yourself and not caring. I sort of like it.) Anyways, the teacher is this black chick who could easily beat me in arm wrestling and is very nice and charming. She is somewhat dreamy, and she has a crazy name that isn't even a name - I will call her "Mwa," which is close enough. Anyways, by the end of the first hour I was feeling a little burn along my shoulder blades -- during step class it became an insistent little dart of unpleasantness with each step on the board -- later that night, I couldn't lean back - or raise my arms - or slouch...

Every time I moved my arms it killed. Walking home from watching SNL with James, I actually had to stop in the street three times - it hurt so much and I could barely breathe. I felt all constricted. To get into bed I had to make these elaborate spins and loops around my room before I could bring myself to endure the vertical-to-horizontal transition. I couldn't sleep - couldn't roll over, could only lay on my back with my arms over my head. After calling my parents the next morning, I popped a fistful of advil and took a hot, hot, hot shower for 25 minutes - and miraculously, my back felt about 70% better. I couldn't believe it.

I took it easy this week, liberally supplementing my diet with over the counter pain medication and taking it easy at the gym. But I'm back to 100% now, and I'm returning to that damnable class this afternoon. I will say to Mwa, "Hey, I wanted to tell you that after last week, my middle and upper back went ballistic, and I can't help but hold you responsible. So.... yeah. Let's march it out." Nothing like an athletic injury that happen in stupid ways! This is almost as good as the time I sprained my wrist in junior high during a particularly ferocious game of pin dodge.

Housewarming

We had a housewarming party on Saturday night! It was fantastic. There were a lot of people there - the main room was full, and there were people sitting on the bed, and others hanging out in the study and in the kitchen. 36 bottles of beer and 12 bottles of wine. I was running around answering the door, throwing coats into the kitchen, and getting drinks - basically being a waiter, which I love to do. I made an ass-kicking music mix that got a few complements, and I think everybody had a good time. It was weird to have everyone in the same room: our good friends, my friends from law school, friends from undergrad, people from my old work, L's work friends, her church friends, our neighbors, our old neighbors.... I ended up drinking a lot and making Hamas jokes at the end of the night. That may have been offensive, I don't know. Nice going, Palestinians.

We invited the neighbors who live around our apartment both to promote neighborly goodwill and as a buffer to prevent indignant complaints about excessive noise. A couple of them came, and the people who live behind us turned out to be a demographic match for us: engaged couple, pretty young, fun and funny. They both work in the beverage industy. [Thoughtful nodding.]

And the kicker is, our neighbor from downstairs, the one who plays the music and the one I'm sort of afraid of, knocked on our door the next day to... give us a housewarming gift. So we are back on the level. I had such a warm feeling at that moment, although since I was still kind of drunk, it could have just been the booze.

Wow, drinking sure is a theme of the last few posts. Not sure how I'm feeling about that.

I went to class drunk

On Tuesdays I have a four-hour break between Civil Procedure and Legal Writing, so I went up to Mama Mexico to celebrate the birthday of Tara, my friend and former colleague. A couple margaritas and a homemade bowl of guacamole later, I am careening back into law school. I had a coke and some cookies to sober up before class, but, shockingly, this didn't work. I wasn't obnoxiously drunk, just a little flushed and easily amused.

Once we're all seated in the seminar room (the class is only 18 people, natch) our teacher, Ross, starts telling us about our oral argument exercise. We were supposed to face off with another class and argue against them, but those plans were canceled. I was bummed. "We would've destroyed them," I muttered.

"What was that, Mike?" Ross said.

"We were gonna destroy them!" I said loudly. People started laughing. Ross said something about how I was in a competitive mood, and maybe somebody else would volunteer to go against me.

"I'll take any a y'all!" I said, pointing around the room. For a moment I slipped into some kind of ghetto persona. I hope my neck didn't swerve. My face was turning red, and in the deepest corner of my mind, the pre-margarita lobe, I thought: why are you talking? Be quiet!

Everyone laughed some more, and Ross said something else about how excited I was for the arguments. "I'm free tonight!" I yelled. They were all amused and some were looking at me strangely - that was not completely out of character, but definitely not my standard in-class outburst. The ones who knew I had been drinking enjoyed it the most.

The rest of the class went smoothly, as I sat quietly, trying to avoid attention and trying to return my face to its normal skin tone. It could have gone a lot worse, but I don't think I should make it a habit.

Movie review: "Cache"

This is a French thriller about a fancypants Parisian couple who start receiving mysterious video tapes in the mail - surveillance videos of their house, hours long, which arrive at their doorstep with crude, sinister drawings and no other explanations. Wound deep within the marrow-like cells of the videotapes are secrets - old, sinister secrets of Le Husband's past, which unlock a frenzy of violence, horror, mediocre parenting, and pretension. Snappy publications I usually trust all rave about this movie as being chilling, exciting, unexpected, gripping, and spine-tingling.

But L and I actually saw this movie the other day, and all I know is, "Cache" is apparently French for "Don't bother." It was horrible. Boring. There was no music in the film and the characters were unsympathetic. There were scenes of really shocking violence: a boy cutting off a chicken's head, and the body careening around the barnyard (which you know they could not film in the US, thanks to our paint-bucket-toting friends at PETA) and a man slitting his own throat on screen. I was fortunate to look away in time to avoid seeing the actual act, but I can tell you that I have never heard a theatre audience make the kind of noise that they made when they saw him kill himself- shock, anguish, confusion.

So basically the movie was incredibly boring and dull, punctuated by horrific violence. There was no real resolution to the story and most questions were left unanswered. The only neat trick was that as a viewer, you were never sure if you were watching the movie or a surveillance tape. But even dipping into the lives of these upper-crusty Parisians - their meals, conversations, homes - did not make up for the wretchedness of the flick. In sum: Don't waste your time.

I joined the gym

To celebrate the new year and maintain my sex appeal and overall level of health, I joined the gym for new year's. I've been pretty good about going, spurred on by L's frenzied addiction to fitness and a healthy sense of competition, in the form of making sure she can't beat me up. Besides the tv's posted above all the treadmills, the best thing about the gym is the classes one can attend. And a good thing about going to a gym in the West Village is that I don't feel the need to be a rugged macho Marlboro man in a headband when many of the dudes are gay there anyhow (although they are the kind of he-man gays who are extremely jacked up and attentive to skincare). So I am free to take classes that would otherwise be potentially embarassing, if I were, say, anywhere else. After a week and a half, here is an update:

Boxing - Correction: there are burly guys in the West Village, and they all gather here, in this class, to kick my ass. I was the only person without handwraps. The teacher was this gnarled, angry muscle with a face, and he yelled the entire time. Amid the punching, running, abwork, and "bear crawls," I adopted that sad face you see on people who exercise, the face that's two-thirds misery and one-third orgasm, the face that is really unattractive. But afterwards he said I did well and I promised to come back (but I didn't because of a class conflict. So I look like a punk).

Total Body Conditioning #1 - Pretty good, fairly hardcore. No cardio work, all muscle. I need the structure of a class to make sure I get a balanced workout and this did the trick. I had three sets of weights, a mat, a bench, and something called a "body bar" that I jabbed into myself intermittently through the session. But it was what I wanted.

Total Body Conditioning #2 - Like the last class, but way gayer. The teacher had apparently just gotten off the trolley from Fire Island. He played this Elton John techno megamix, so we were pumping out to "Your Song" and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight." It did the trick, though. But this class was a bunch of lumberjacks armwrestling compared to...

Step - Ok, I was asking for it. But I was curious. This class was honestly pretty fun, although it was the least strenuous. We learned these complicated moves and routines, and it turns out there's a whole lot more to step than stepping - we were mamboing, shimmying around the benches, going in front of and behind them, spinning around. It was fun the way line dances are fun. I laughed when the instructor started barking, "Arabesque! Arabesque!" But there was another guy in the class, and he had been there before, and I did better than him, so that was rewarding. And, the instructor said I did really well for a first-timer. I thought about challenging him to a danceoff then and there, to establish alpha-male status in the step studio, you know, but I declined.

Recruit

I went to a reception last night hosted by one of the big law firms here in the city. They invited 1L's to come by and say hello and begin the recruitment process for summer jobs. It was really weird. Strutting up Park Avenue in my suit, looking purposeful, I felt like a fraud. When I finally made it into the conference room where the reception was taking place, there were only about ten other people there. The students had nametags with green writing, and the lawyers had nametags with red writing. So you spent a lot of time craning your neck to see who you should bother talking to, because what's the point of sharing that funny anecdote from Torts class with some schlub from Cardozo? It was like a frat party where the girls hadn't arrived yet. So some girl came and talked to me who recognized me from undergrad and we hung around for a bit.

It was really bizarre. The same awkward conversation repeated twelve times over, or spinning some conversational gold out of nothing. Awkward silence, then "how do you like law school?," countered by "how long have you been at the firm?" And then you're off to the races. There were attendants passing around gorgeous hors d'oeuvres, little flaky pastries and kabobs and these juicy lamb chops, but who would eat a lamb chop at a professional mixer like this? I had one beer and after 90 minutes had hit my saturation point.

As I was walking back I thought about how this life of wealth and comfort seems pretty darn close, in a way. And also how these firms are like the Cheneys of the legal world. Product liability cases, when a medicine makes people sick and they die? The firms defend the pharmaceutical companies, and they win. Environmental cases? The firms defend the polluting industries, and they win. I don't know if I can do that.