I had a subscription to The Economist when I was at New Haven. One of those little coupons from a bulletin board in a classroom building or a residence hall. Six months or a year of a magazine at some major student discount. So I had a subscription to The Economist for a while. Miss Ginny at Ginny_McCoo wrote me once to say that she found The Economist too sound-bite, that the articles were never long enough. But I have a subscription again. Something I've had for a year or so now. I do like the book reviews and the area surveys. But it's easy enough to know what sent me to get a subscription--- a photo from a boarding gate at JFK:

I like the leather satchel. I'm not a vitamin-water drinker, but I like the flavour in the photo. American passport--- I know how much the girl who took the photo was angry that her parents hadn't helped her get the British passport she would've been eligible for. But there was a copy of The Economist in the photo, and I knew I'd be Obsessing over it, and over what she got from it on her way to Vantaa aerodrome.

I know I do that. I measure myself against what the girls I Obsess over do. I measure myself against Adventures and experiences, measure whether I'm as good as they are, whether I'm as valuable as they are--- valuable enough to have a life, a career, lovers, Stories. I don't have any of those things now--- cities, Adventures, a MacBook Pro, language immersion, physical skills, friends, travels, a future, lovers.

The thing in the mirror will never have lovers. One of the partners at the office made a joke in a meeting yesterday suggesting that I'd have a bald spot. I stood up and walked out--- took my briefcase and walked out of the office. A bald spot--- let's be clear about that. A bald spot is a marker for failure, for decay. No one with a bald spot can--- or should ---have sex again. Not that there's any chance that I'd have a lover again anyway.

I have to have and do the things that girls I Obsess over have done. I have to be as good as they are, to have Stories and Adventures that match up to theirs. Once I'm as good as they are, once our Story levels are matched, then we can go on to have Adventures and Stories together. But I know that a girl with, e.g., a new MacBook Pro that's "so rad" looks down on me for having a Toshiba laptop. No one who lives in a real city can help but despise someone who lives where I do. No one who can run and box and jump rope and row crew can feel anything other than contempt for my body and lack of any physical skills and grace. No lovely girl who can have lovers feels anything but contempt for me.

I need to match Stories there, of course. I measure myself against the Stories girls tell about their lovers, and I always insist that girls do all the things they've done with Others with me--- to bring me up level with them before we can have our own new Adventures. I know that everytime a girl has lain naked on a carriage house sofa or spent a birthday naked in bed with a lover smoking pot and listening to Ravi Shankar or Velvet Underground, she's mocking me when we're together, that she's judging me against the lovers she's had and finding me valueless in comparison. Whenever a girl goes back to a boy's dorm room and slowly peels off skinny jeans or makes love on the balcony of a deserted house that she'd once lived in, whenever a girl does things like that, she's thinking derisively of how I can never do those things and will never do anything like them again.

Now I'll never have value enough to have a lover again. I know that. And I know that no girl will ever find me worth choosing over Others. I suppose I need that more than anything--- to have a girl choose me over Others, to find me valuable enough to be vaut un detour, valuable enough to choose when she could've had Others. Just once--- just once ---I want to be the one chosen, not the one rejected out of hand. No girl will ever travel to meet me. I know that. But if ever a girl does want to come meet me, there are things I'll insist on. She has to be the one who makes the effort. Give up a couple of days of class, drive at some difficult hour, miss a day of work--- think I'm worth making an effort for, think I'm worth giving up something for, however symbolic it might be. I want to be chosen, to have some market value. And I'll never have that.

A room somewhere on the Skinny Island. I'll never see it. I don't even know where it really is. But there's no object in it that doesn't remind me of how valueless I am in comparison
to her, how I'll never have Stories as good as hers:

I still hope that Miss Ginny at Ginny_McCoo and Laura-Ashlee at BladeOfTheKnife and even Miss WaterColorFire go to my LastFM and look at my tracklists. That's one thing I've always hoped: that they'd at least look at my tracklists and think I might know something useful. I always look at music they listen to and judge myself against their playlists. Music says something about personal style, intellectual interests, sexual tastes. Tracklists and bibliographies are markers. Always. I do hate it that Miss Lissy at Emigree locked up her GoodReads shelves. She has academic and political interests that intersect with mine. I always wanted to be able to see if she'd found books and topics I might like...and to measure myself against the topics she reads both for class and on her own. LastFM tracklists--- I so need to think that Miss Ginny at Ginny_McCoo or Miss Laura-Ashlee at BladeOfTheKnife would read down my LastFM lists and think that I had some value based on my music.

Cards in my wallet--- Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU. I wish I could've interned with Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. My law school grades were pretty dismal except for classes in international law and EU law and human rights. I did get the little best-in-show certificates for being top of the class in those. Oh, yes. At one point I could've talked all about insider-trading rules in the EU and about how Eastern Europe states had to adopt human-rights standards as part of the EU acquis communataire. But I'll never get to do anything with HRW or Amnesty International or the ICRC. The thing in the mirror could never be good enough or valuable enough to get a real career in a real city or do any of the kind of work he wants to do.

I watched "Adventureland" last night and cried. I'd had four or five glasses of Demerara dark rum, but it wasn't just Guyana rum that made me cry. No girl like Kristin Stewart would ever speak to me, and Kristin Stewart's character in "Adventureland" so reminds me of a green-eyed girl in skinny-leg jeans. The film was set in 1987. That made me cry, too. The characters in the film would be in their mid-forties now. Old enough to watch themselves decay in the mirror, old enough to be told never to have sex again.

When I find that girls have updated here or at FaceBook after midnight or sent late-night e-mails, I always assume that they're up late at their MacBook Pros because they've just come home from sex in a lover's bed. Or from parties and smoking pot and being out in the night. I take it for granted that lovely girls who can have sex at will look with contempt and derision at people who'll never have sex again--- people like me. A year ago I thought I might escape being valueless. Even in late July of the Year Nine I thought I might have some value as a lover. After all, value as a lover is the only value that really counts. But I was only lying to myself. The thing in the mirror will never have a girl kick off her ballet flats and pull down ultra-low skinny-leg jeans and climb into his bed. No girl will smoke a joint in bed with me while Ravi Shankar plays, or play wonderfully arcane vinyl in the Montreal night while lying there with me on wood floors.

I'll never have Stories again. I'll never have any of the things or do any of the things girls I Obsess over can. Nothing I am, nothing I do will ever be as good as what they are or what they do. I'll never do the things with them they do with Others. The thing in the mirror has no value at all. Not even as a voice on the aether.

There aren't any comments here any more. No one engages in conversations or shares stories. I have no idea if anyone reads this. Yes--- I always count comments and measure the number against the days when notes flew back and forth in exchanges and conversations. No one uses comments as ways to flirt and charm and exchange ideas. I couldn't read comments here, of course. I never open Facebook messages or e-mail. I'm too afraid of what they might say. There's never Good News any more, never a sense of play and flirtation and fun. There's only and ever Bad News. I desperately need comments and contact, but I'm far too afraid to read anything or open anything. There'll never be Good News again, never be voices.

Go up the steps from the street. 512 W. 112th St. Come in from Broadway. Go into the faux-Ottoman bleu-and-white tiled foyer. It's still late summer on the Skinny Island; the street door will be open. Go in and...what? Will there even be a scream? Whatever's waiting in there--- I know I'll have to come to it sooner or later. Sooner, I think.