Night Report: Beauty Archive

A few nights in the life of a nightwalker in the big city.

Monday

Hearsay via invitation from a woman I met there once. She works at the Monarch. Or was it the Mirage? I get them mixed up all the time. She tells me that these are the nights the real dancers go out, folks who work in nightlife and have a curated taste for it, since it’s the only time they can be sure that the amateurs are inside and out of the way.

That’s the same attitude I get from George Bang Bang, which is where I go to pregame after I get off work early. (My last client canceled and I’m not complaining.) They’re starting to recognize me here, not least of all because I always get the same drink. I shouldn’t be spending on liquor this much, not fancy Midtown speakeasy much, because I still haven’t figured out my housing situation. Just thinking about it is stressing me out though so I’m going to go ahead and get another Oldboy anyway. Can’t go wrong with mezcal.

It’s a leisurely walk from here to the Meatpacking District. I’m thinking of making Midtown my next domain. There’s nothing here which means there’s a lot of potential. I said it earlier this summer, when I was stepping away from the city, I’m the prince of the wasteland.

The actual night in the venue is a haze, more than usual. I remember bass thumping and the thickness of the crowd. Figures blending together, bumping into each other, hours running by as grains of sand. I’ve got sand in my fingernails still from Europe no matter how hard I scrub my hands. No matter how many times I experience it, that uncertainty of desire in someone’s eyes always excites me. Do you want me? Am I projecting my own interest into you? We’re blank canvasses, all of us here, and the night is hurling all sorts of shades of red onto our flesh. Nightlife is the new Pollock marketplace of ideas and sensations.

Tuesday

Taking the day off work. But I forgot to tell some clients, so I have 2 sessions randomly interspersed throughout the day. I’m exhausted so I start the day with Adderall and double up on espresso and kratom around lunch to get me gliding easy but energetic into the evening.

I have to do lots of running around in order to prepare for the move: a tour here, phone calls there, sending applications here (sending more money), fielding friends expressing their sympathies, running to Home Depot and buying some boxes and packing tape. It’s a lot, too much really, but I’ve got to do it. Someone’s got to. I’m a bit of an ouroboros, I think, cursed with being a tragic image, I’m reluctant to reach out for support because I am often disappointed by those whose support means the most. Maybe one could consider me a martyr. I wouldn’t even be in this housing situation if both my favorite aunt and grandfather didn’t abandon our plans with short notice and little remorse. I also wouldn’t be in such dire financial straits if I didn’t go fuck off across the pond this summer, but I don’t regret living life, I resent that life is resistant to letting me live it smoothly and with a smile.

Am I angry at myself for the uncertainties of my life? Or does it excite me? As usual the real answer is neither and also both. There is no black and white despite the permutation of the night into every waking hour, despite our skin colors and the severities of our sins. Everyone is somewhere on our arbitrary moral spectrum trying to claw their way to sainthood. Everyone but us chosen few, that is, who see the futility of the Sisyphean journey towards goodness; those of us who try to abandon the quest altogether, who seek more and more to be free of ethics and discourse around desire. If God doesn’t concern their self with social constructs like Goodness, why should I?

By the time the sun sets — earlier each day now — I’ve done all I can and looking around my whirlwind of an apartment feels both melancholy and overwhelming. I have to distract myself.

To N. I’ve found a heiress that loves to denigrate me. And she loves to ask when I’m going to write about her. I’ve said it but I don’t think she quite understands: that I’m always writing about her, and my friends, and my father; everyone is embedded into my words, even myself. Every beat that makes me bob my head brings to mind memories of connection. And we’re all connected; I see myself in what she regales of her father, and I see my mother in the way she turns her nose up at my poverty and lifestyle. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, extrapolating now to you reading this, N., and A., and S., and the other A., and you whom I don’t know yet: we are our fathers and our mothers and more.