Hair on the Face.

Word is that mustaches are making a comeback. That's infuriating news, because I thought I had finally settled on some facial hair that I wouldn't have to shave off after a year or two because everyone else was sporting it too.

I like facial hair, but I don't have a lot of choices because most of my beard is patchy and thin. It's thick enough on my chin and upper lip, so for a while I had a goatee. But the whiskers on my chin grow sideways, so I looked like the bottom half of my head was caught in a windstorm while the upper half remained undisturbed. I gave up and shaved it off, but I left the mustache, at first because I thought it was funny, but then I decided it was kind of sexy -- and nobody had mustaches, at least not last year -- so I kept it.

Before the goatee, I had that little patch under the lip for many, many years. I thought it suited me. I resisted shaving it off when it became popular, but eventually it got so ubiquitous I couldn't stand it any more.

It's not like I need to make a huge statement or anything, but I do like to appear a little unusual. I think it's because of my shyness. Because I have trouble actually talking to new people, I need to telegraph something about me with my appearance. And I just like facial hair. I like it on other men, I like it on myself. It's manly, and I like that.

Pee-Shy.

I promise I won't turn this blog into a dream journal, but this one was so weird and disturbing and funny that I can't not write it down.

I was moving back to New York and moving back in with my friend JG on E. 10th St. (JG was my first roommate in New York. We went to Parsons together. I lived with her from 1981 to 1983 and again, after leaving my first long-term relationship, broke and desperate, from 1990 to 1992. We were very close, but she was one of a handful of women I knew in college and immediately after with whom I had difficult friendships. I was always falling short of their expectations of me.) In the dream, the situation felt very precarious and I felt emotionally fragile. J dropped me off there with only a small suitcase and, I think, one box, and he drove away.

I had barely arrived and set down my stuff. I was going to pee when JG walked into the room and said "What are you doing?" I said I was going to pee, and she said she had to go too. (There were two toilets in the living room.) I turned around and saw that she was completely naked. This in itself wasn't a surprise; JG was often naked. She liked being naked. What was a surprise is that she had a big honkin' pink shlong. I tried to swallow my shock, and I tried unsuccessfully to urinate (I've gotten very pee-shy in my old age).

When she was done, we were standing in the kitchen talking, and I said something like, "I see you have a penis now." And she said, "Right, and you're going to be giving me some." I said, "Some what?" "Blowjobs! I'll give you some too." I said, "No! Absolutely not. That's not what this is about. I'm not going to do that." She looked terribly wounded, and she ran away. She started moving her stuff back into the bedroom that she had cleared out for me.

I was suddenly really, really upset and scared. I decided to call J and ask him to come get me, but my cell phone wouldn't work. I kept punching "8," which is the speed dial for J, but when I would press "Call," it would go to another menu. Every time I tried it, something different would happen. (I don't know J's number by heart to just dial it.) I kept trying and trying and trying. I knew that I had no place to go. I woke up.

When I went back to sleep later, I returned to the dream. I was still in JG's apartment. There was a party. I was avoiding her and covertly trying to arrange to get the hell out. Our mutual friend from Parsons, F, was there. We were leaning against a wall in the bedroom talking. (He was one of those boys in college who become really aggravating to their friends because they take forEVer to come out even though everybody already knows. Those boys are usually Catholic, aren't they?) I was trying to get him to give me his phone number, but I sensed that he didn't want to give it to me. I had an escape plan in my head that required his number. I was coming on to him, salaciously, considering we were at a party and surrounded by people holding cocktails and talking.

One More Day.

I usually think the whole Mercury-in-retrograde thing is pretty silly. Like El Niño, it turns into an explanation of every little inconvenience or difficulty that happens to occur. As if these things don't happen all the time without an astrological excuse. But tell that to my cell phone, which I think must be watching the calender, because about three times a year it goes haywire.

I think my friends have gotten the message that I hate talking on the phone, and nobody calls me any more. I have the cheapest plan available which I think is 400 minutes, and still I only use about 150 of them. My phone gets more use as my alarm clock. Two days ago, instead of snoozing for 6 minutes like it's supposed to, it snoozed for an hour and a half. Seriously, it still said "snoozing" on the screen when I woke up with barely enough time to get to class. And this morning, though it was set for 6:30, like always, it went off at 1:59. When I went to reset it, it was still set for 6:30.

According to this web site that J sent me, today is the last day of this period of Mercury in retrograde, and the last four days, including today, are supposed to be the worst.