the quest for bad material

I'm still on a quest for writing inspiration, and failing miserably. I've been kind of sloughing through (I know it's not an exactly right expression, but it's close enough and good enough, and I think I'm coining it) everything I write lately, feeling pretty uninspired (as mentioned in the previous blog entry). And it's still happening.

Frustrating? Yes. Inevitable? Also yes. You can only write for so long before hitting a wall, or so I've discovered.

Would you like to know what I had for dinner tonight? Too bad. That would be an easy fix to this problem (and, for those that know me, would likely lead to a good tangent about something potentially very uninteresting yet anecdotal from my past). Better luck next time digging that information out of me.

I wish I were Poe-ish and could just rely on Opium to fuel my dry periods. Unfortunately, I have to be part of the non-drug-addled masses. Not that I'm not curious, but I'm already too old for experimentation.

Hear that, over 32s? It applies to other areas too. Stop experimenting and get on the productive ball already. You're just too old, and you're not missing anything. You heard it here first.

Writing: The Impossible Chore

Writing has been a challenge for me the past few weeks. I just can't wrap my head around doing significant amounts of work, and it's starting to hurt. What's my motivation?

I have a list of a million things I want to be writing, like bad movie reviews, hipster observations, songs and other things. But I can't type a word of anything interesting. And let this be no exception.

Heart of the Matter

I hate Don Henley with the passionate, burning heat of 10,000 suns.

However, this cover is fantastic. India.Arie is one of my guilty pleasures. Though, maybe not so guilty. She's kind of lovely.

I'll give it to Don Henley. This is a great song. It was just the execution that was previously problematic.

Thank God for new life breathed into old things sometimes.

Heart of the Matter.

I just bruise too easily

The subject line statement pretty much applies to any figurative or literal instances you can imagine. Lately, I've been taking a lot of punches, and the resultant bruises have been taking over. Figuratively, I'd rather not talk about it in public forum. This means I have a lot of "internal" bruises that are forming and building based on a variety of very unpleasant and uncomfortable things that are happening to me now. Actually, I don't know yet whether they are unpleasant, more of the same or the sign of change ... but they are definitely taking me outside my comfort zone.

Literally, I've been waking up a lot with inexplicable (though some explicable) marks on my person. The other week (the morning after my birthday party, in fact), I noticed some strange fingerprint bruises on my leg. My guess has been that I dug into my own leg while adrift in Sandmanville (after a slightly compromised too-many-cocktails night with friends). But the fact that I have yet to determine exactly how I got blue fingerprints beyond a reasonable doubt has led to some pretty bizarre dreams during which my brain tries to explain it to me. Last night in my sleep, I dreamed a break-in at my apartment (a recurring nightmare of mine) during which the nightmare assailant admitted to having come in here and left them for me previously. I didn't even remember this dream until I was in the elevator going downstairs to get laundry earlier today.

Sadly, the above two paragraphs is all the profundity I have to offer today (and none of it is actually really that deep and is generally pretty boring).

I don't even think I feel like offering up another novel snippet.

However, a taste of a song I was working on today is possible. Verse, bridge or chorus? I guess you'll know someday:

"Just when you think it’s over, this searching forever
It winds on and on, repeating mistakes
Roads and paths diverging and clever
World full of false hope, universe of fakes"

And the blah blah blah goes on and on ...

A Day is a Day is a Whole Lifetime

Today is just one of those days (as has been this week so far, really). I need to find some motivation, something good needs to happen and I have not a lot to say. Nausea and anxiety are ruling my life. I guess when this happens I'll just post bits and pieces of novels or other things I'm working on rather than create blog-specific content. I suppose that's how it's supposed to be ... suppose, supposed, supposing:

The Undeep Thought and Simone De Beauvoir ...

"Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying." -- Simone de Beauvoir

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around life lately. For me it's been a series of quick changes that I'm left scrambling to accept. I feel like I'm flopping around like a fish sometimes (a trout, of course); just as I start to know what's going on, I get thrown back, but most of the time I miss the water and end up in the grass, on the ground, or on the cold boat floor, gasping for air.

Oh, but it's not as dramatic as all that, for sure.

The truth is, things are not so confusing for me as that. I'm really steady, and when I decide something, I decide it. There is some purpose to everything, and this I believe. As life goes on, I see themes more clearly, and I start to at least trust a little in the direction of it all because there are just signs and signals everywhere, lately going off like fireworks over the water. I'm not getting thrown back into the same pond every time; every time I get thrown it's in a bigger, deeper pond with more possibilities, and other dearest fish are with me, somewhere, even if they're at the other end of the pond for a while.

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me."

and the band(s) played on ... and words and stuff

I decided today that I need to start another musical project that is a strict rock band. I haven't done it in a while, and I think I need to in order to get some things out and do some different kind of songwriting. Sappy country is near and dear to my heart, and the words flow freely there, but I need something simple to balance it out. One band capturing complex emotions is enough. Plus, I need to play some piano again, so, keyboards it is. Blame it on last week's introspection.

I'm trying to do things outside my comfort zone and have some more patience with and enjoy the things that may not currently fit there but are potentially transformational and transformable (both ends are a little selfish, I imagine). I haven't been so good at that, and I tend to push to force things to fit into my idea of what is good for me instead of letting them happen to me in the way they are supposed to. I think it turns me into a bit of a saboteur, because you just never know what something can be if you immediately put it in a neat (or messy) little box. Obviously I don't necessarily know what is good for me, so I need to shut up more and be more passive. So, here's to trying to do that from now on, at least for a little while.

And, that ends the "Dear Diary, Why so blue?" portion of the evening. Sometimes I lapse without knowing it. But at least it's better written than most ramblings about puppies and rainbows coming from other horrible nether regions of the Internet ... at least I consider them to be nether regions.

And, here is another piece from a novel I was working on this weekend. It's totally out of context, but I'm certainly not going to give away the store online, even if I die in artistic obscurity without anything published beyond some small business articles:


I'll tell you something specific and involving you. I try not to do that because of who you aren’t, but I will because I want to. I had a moment one Saturday in Chicago. We were sitting listening to Prince: "Starfish and Coffee." I was staring at the clearest blue sky, the skyline, lying on my stomach. I was in a world, thinking of other things, daydreaming about possibly nothing, but I was definitely not there. And you put your arm around me, clasped my hand in your hand. Ridiculous moment, but it meant something because I pulled you into me when I thought we were through. And nothing else mattered but the fact that we were two people making some sort of a connection, however brief. They just keep happening, changing, transforming, becoming more and less and more beautiful again. And it’s how the heart hungers for something that makes it beautiful.

I Love You ... no, really ...

Tonight is all about guilty pleasures. So, congratulations Climax Blues Band, you win. I just paid to download an entire album simply to get this one song (because I refuse to illegally download music anymore, since it seems a little hypocritical given that I wouldn't want someone to steal my own music).

It's very Paul McCartney meets Rod Stewart meets Hall and Oates. This means it tastes absolutely ridiculous, but also delicious.

This video is actually pretty spectacular.

I Love You

in the style of the moodiest Beethoven ...

Tonight began with a self-imposed lock-down so that I could finish writing a chapter of one of my simultaneously-going novels. Once I finished, I found myself feeling pretty Kierkegaardian about the point of writing, the life road I've chosen creatively, spiritually and otherwise and all that has happened in the last decade. And somehow, I traveled into a world of re-watching Five Easy Pieces.

Of the many long-shot, risky career and life options I had given my musical and artistic DNA, why did I not choose music? Nothing I am good at has much potential to make me enough money to survive. (I've taught myself that quite well in the last decade.) Music has been around me since my fetal womb life. Both my parents are accomplished musicians. My father still composes, arranges and conducts, and while he is not as much of a performer as he is a quietly strong musical archivist, composer, teacher and general leader his skill at all these things is daunting. My late mother was a pianist/accompanist/opera coach/flutist extraordinaire who I remember practicing constantly as my sister and I were falling asleep at night. The grand piano in our living room would vibrate and waft up the stairs into my room as she crafted circusy Rimski-Korsakov phrases or struggled through passages from some modern, dissonant composition, turning passages over and over again until they were technically and expressively flawless (these were the times I'd lie awake waiting for it to stop or drift off into repetitive nightmares). Other times, Debussy and Chopin would lull me into a familiar sleep of peaceful dreams. To this day, I've never heard a pianist as able to convey emotion and intensity so fitting to each individual piece of music and so true to what I imagined was every composer's vision. She took us to operas, recitals and concerts almost every weekend (many of which she was performing in or helping pull off), had us cavorting with well-known, highly-skilled, probably often famous musicians (I still don't think I know fully the scope of those I met throughout my formative years), composers and artists starting when we were babies, with no fear of how we might behave in places where we needed to be quiet. In fact, I think we just simply behaved because we just knew that music required reverence and we respected the work it took to craft and perform it. I know I personally saw it as something sacred that could stop time and space (and I still do). There was no end to the new dimensions I could hear, even when listening to the same pieces over and over again. I probably innately knew (without even knowing) more about the different styles and periods of what people consider "classical music" at age 4 than a lot of adults (even musicians) ever know about it.

So, why did I ultimately rebel against an official career in music? I really didn't know what I had. I think for a long time I assumed everyone was surrounded by music, got to attend operas and meet hugely talented musicians (and hear them play) every weekend. I assumed everyone could play the cello or piano whenever they wanted to or just pick up any instrument at the drop of the hat and know how it worked (and even be able to play it) in a few hours ... or a few minutes.

I always studied with the very best teachers in the area and played on the very best instruments, even though we definitely didn't have much money. My parents made sure of that. We had a Steinway Grand in our living room (with an insane story about my grandfather finding it being used as a chopping block in a restaurant kitchen and buying it from them for my mother as a gift attached). When I was not even six, my mother came home with a cello (which had belonged to Sir Georg Solti's daughter) and simply said, "I want a cellist in this family, so someone is going to play this." Since my sister was already playing the violin (and we were both playing the piano), the task fell on me. There was no question.

Starting at about eight-years old, I played piano guild competitions. I had to memorize a handful (I believe eight-ten) of piano pieces and accompanying scales and arpeggios. It was a lot of pressure, and it was eventually what brought about the beginning of the end of my "professional child prodigy" career (at least on piano). When I was about ten, I did a competition and got one point off because my judge felt that my artistic expression was a little off in a Mozart Sonata. My score was the equivalent of 99/100, I was ten (maybe not even -- it was a few months shy of that birthday), and I was playing pieces that a lot of pianists don't even play until high school or college. But a kindly-put note from an old man (that I STILL have in a scrap book) named Fran Shuler-Ellis crushed my world. I cried so much that I couldn't go back to school that day after the competition (even though my mom made fun of the judge mercilessly, as he was someone in the artistic community she felt was a hack and we had a roller skating party that night). Mercifully, my mom ended the guild competitions then and there and loosened the rigorousness of piano lessons.

I wonder if she should've pushed me, and if I would still love music now or would've found my own way to my current musical experiments if she had. Am I even as good a person as I could've been, or did I ruin everything because of these decisions? Did I actually quit because I caved under the pressure or because I am actually by nature lazy? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. Either way, oftenI feel like a failure that continues to regularly fall short of family's and others' expectations, and I think it's because I labeled myself a quitter, possibly as early as that last piano competition.

As a party trick in the car or at social functions (starting at about five or six and then all the way through high school), my mother would often get me to name the composer of the piece playing on the radio/record player/etc., which I could always do in a few notes, without even knowing how. If I didn't get it exactly right (which happened rarely), it was always someone that had lived and composed in the same era or was a derivative of the composer I had guessed. As time wore on, I could name the piece and even the movement in some cases, in fewer and fewer notes. I feel like most of my musical abilities come from complete instinct, but then I look at my understanding of things like music theory and technique and history and realize that it is likely a combination of instinct and an accumulation of a lifetime of study of and complete immersion in music. I've just never felt like it counted because I don't have a sheet of paper from a university/college telling me that I am officially allowed to be a "musician."

After college, where I did play in orchestra and take cello and voice lessons despite the English B.A. I took with me at the end, I decided I was going to continue on and get as many music degrees as possible in cello performance so I could be an official orchestral performer. Unfortunately, I found myself procrastinating practicing for auditions (even though I did practice 4-5 hours per day, 6 days per week for about 9 months) with writing, and ended up deciding that meant I should probably be pursuing a writing MFA instead of forcing myself to do the other thing that I'd worked my whole life to do.

If I looked at my writing and reading life, starting with the first even remotely lengthy book I ever devoured, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, I would probably find a lot of the same trends as in my musical life. I am a creative house divided against itself, and that truth might never end. I may have to continue to be bi-creative and maybe will never know what I want to be when I grow up ... forever. It makes me long for some title to grab onto, like "stockbroker" or "lawyer" or "doctor." Even "cellist" or "pianist" would be a neat little compartment that might make me wonder less about what my past means and why I turned out this way and how unintentionally ungrateful I may have been at times for how lucky I was to be surrounded by such artistic richness during my formative years and beyond.

I can't stop listening to Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 again lately, most particularly the Adagio movement, which is my favorite musical creation on the planet. (My sister HATES it, because of Eric Carmen's "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again," which blatantly ripped off Rachmaninoff's Adagio melody and is indeed fairly awful.) I never managed to play it in any orchestra, though I've played so many of my other favorites, like the Beethoven Cello Sonatas (I played the first one, accompanied by my mother on Mother's Day as part of my senior recital in college -- again, why did I not appreciate this?), Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" and so many Mozart quartets and quintets that they were spilling out my ears at one point. I even played some movements of piano concertos with my junior high orchestra, as well as an entire cello concerto during the same time. Before my mom died, she bought me some Rachmaninoff cello music to learn in hopes we would one day play it together, but that is not the same. I will play the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony before I die. I'm a writer and a do-er, so mark my words.

Now Introducing ... the Uninvited Dinner Guest

Last night, I dealt with my most unfavorite creature: the uninvited dinner guest.

The uninvited dinner guest also comes in other forms, such as uninvited party guest or uninvited wedding guest (the worst, really) and is actually not always technically "uninvited." Usually, in fact the person has somehow managed to work him/herself into plans because someone attending the dinner or party has a moment of weakness and can't come up with a good excuse for being busy when the Uninvited asks, "What are you doing tonight?" Usually, Uninvited Guest is an old high school or college friend that you've just discovered lives in the city and that maybe you hoped you'd never see again.

Last night, someone invited an old high school friend that only two of the four other people at the table knew to dinner at a Mexican restaurant downtown. I will call her "#5," because she was the fifth person at the table, the fifth guest to ruin a nice foursome, the fifth wheel, etc. Here is what happened ...

1. She showed up about an hour or more late, even though she lived right around the corner from the restaurant. This meant we had to wait to order food and were mostly through the guacamole when she arrived (a fact that likely did not escape her attention and will appear in future critiques of the evening. I mean, her fourth chin was super hungry!). It also meant we had time to drink large margaritas on mostly empty stomachs (meaning by the end of dinner I was almost completely incapable of keeping my mouth shut).

2. She talked about her telecommunications job like she was running Verizon, AT&T and every major conglomerate ... and feeding orphans. No one could be more awesome or important than she, so there was no point trying. Still, by the end of dinner, I had no idea what her job entailed, although I know it involved her being in high demand on her Blackberry during social functions. Yes -- her job is so important that she apparently receives work e-mails AFTER WORK HOURS (I know ... can you even fathom?) that need immediate attention.

3. She couldn't stop talking about people from high school and especially about how she was still in touch with the person who was apparently the hottest boy there (though I think I need photographic evidence to properly assess that his eyes were cerulean and he had great hair). I'm going to call him Chet Chetterson. She was so in touch with Chet, in fact, that she was texting him during dinner to tell him she was hanging out with two of his former classmates, one of whom apparently rejected his sexual advances 20 years ago. She kept referring to him as "The Rocket" which I felt was implying that, while he wouldn't touch the one that had rejected him, he had definitely "gone there" with her (if only to seek solace in the arms of a real woman). There was also some woman that was not there that kept coming up in conversation named "Virginia" that had apparently whored herself out to him post rejection (again, 20 years ago). (This also led to the quirky catch-phrase "He put his rocket in her Virginia.") Currently, according to reports, Chet still looks pretty good and has some uber-important job that is just as nondescript as hers, but that lands him regularly in exotic locales like Copenhagen, where he was apparently, much to #5's chagrin, stuck last night. She took it upon herself to call her Copenhagen contacts during dinner and set up a place for him to stay, thus further proving her wide reach.

And here is a dramatic recreation of a conversation snippet about Chet. All the phrases/details in it were actually uttered at some point, but not necessarily together in this exact form:

"OMG, can you believe when Chet Chetterson jacked off in my hat at volleyball practice while I was wearing a New York Giants Jersey?"

Could we get more Sex and the City? I mean, that is SO Samantha/Miranda/Carrie/Charlotte! I'll be the fifth one that is not any of the core four, please. Actually, we would've been more suited for a recreation of the low-rent ladies-who-lunch "Carmel" car service commercial that airs regularly on NY1.

4. She talked about Chattum, NY and its fine, fine organic food and grass-fed cows, and how everyone in New York City has a house there, including Elliot Spitzer. As someone mentioned -- do you really want to admit you know where Elliot Spitzer's house is in Chattum, #5? You probably don't, unless you're a hooker. But what was really annoying about the conversation, of course, was that it was an endless string of her being so important and into the finer things that she can tell the difference between regular eggs and farm fresh and appreciates proper treatment of livestock.

5. #5's most pervasive trait was constant complaining about the service and quality of food at the restaurant. She was making it very clear to us that she is accustomed to getting the royal treatment everywhere she goes. She demands respect, and she's going to get it, even if it means being rude, loud and not even rooted in reality. Given, the service was not wonderful, but we were seated at a table outside that was way far away from the actual restaurant, meaning coming out to us once the restaurant cleared out a little was no small feat for the waiter. She did the following things to make her needs known: screamed at the waiter to at least bring her a margarita when he came out for the tenth time and we still couldn't order because she wasn't ready; asked me if the mussels were bad, because she said they looked and smelled "like shit" (after putting three on her plate with her greasy, fat fingers) and she wouldn't touch them ... and then put them back with the rest of the "clean" ones; went into the restaurant regularly to harass the waiter about coming back more often; went on a search for silverware and a plate because, again, she was the fifth and thus there weren't any set out for her, and then complained that she couldn't find any and stared at us all like we had killed her baby because we were eating without her. I thought at one point about going in and slipping the waiter a 20 just to make sure my food was served up "sin saliva." I'm also pretty convinced that when she came back from one of her recovery missions to get the waiter and told us he was inside complaining loudly about how much he hated coming out to serve us that she was making it up so we would build enough ire to stand behind her as she tried to get free cheese. I mean, he brought us delicious, free aperitifs at the end of the meal and drank one with us.

6. She didn't have cash on her ... and didn't tell us until the end of the meal (when the check was on the table, in fact). Because I was running late, I didn't stop at a cash machine beforehand, but after saying my hellos, I did indeed immediately leave and find a cash machine so I would be prepared. She was way late to dinner, and then sat there for two hours knowing full well she would need to get money at some point. Why not wait until the rudest possible moment? When everyone wants to get the hell out of there because you are so obnoxious that they need to go home and sleep it off or punch something in private, very hard. I will confess, this was the proverbial camel straw and the point at which I started to actually literally do evil things to her to make her miserable. The first thing I did was send her to a cash machine a couple blocks away that I knew was out of order. I don't know why, but her being forced to walk only to meet failure felt like a somewhat satisfying form of punishment. The second thing I did was, when the aperitifs came out while she was on her ATM quest, lick the entire rim of her shot glass and drink part of her drink. Others followed suit, but I was definitely first.

Take that, #5. I celebrate myself a little sometimes because I get away with saying and doing completely uncouth things to people that deserve it with a smile, a joke and a little sparkle. I don't know if people really let it slide because they think I'm kidding, or if they are so terrified of my calm glee that they just don't dare say I'm not a nice person. Either way, I win.

Memory, or an Excerpt ...

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. – Vladimir Nabakov

I have a ridiculously steel trap-like memory that captures weird details, mostly seemingly insignificant; but I’ve noticed lately that, despite the ever-growing influx of information that naturally accrues as I add days to my experience on the earth, I seem to be getting better and not worse at remembering. In fact, the details are much more specific than before.

It’s funny though – I used to remember names of people and places, but not contexts and incidental details. Now I am much more apt to remember very minute details, but not have a clue about very basic facts. It’s all about sensory experience for me – fabrics, smells, feelings, temperature, stuff … and the atoms inside the things inside stuff.

I also oddly have a similarly photographic memory for conversations, which is why I get so much good material and dialogue for stories I tell aloud or through letters. I really do use actually recanted dialogue from real conversations, rather than just providing the usually completely acceptable “gist,” which is really just an interpretation of reality and ultimately not to be trusted when filtered through a thirdly-, fourthly-, or fifthly-processing brain. Sometimes I cheat and actually directly quote parts of e-mails or letters that are not my own, either in oral tales or in stories I repeat to those close to me. Some people from my past will likely get upset and potentially litigious someday; but I cover my tracks well enough. I change the names, even if my new name choices contain clues that end up obviously pointing back to the original sources.

To be more specific and give an example, I recently remembered accompanying someone into a store to very briefly shop for a winter coat, and I could remember what the coat in the running for “the one” looked like, the details of the store, along with other clothing that was in it and almost exactly where the store was located. Still, I was at a loss for the store’s name.

That is but one example that has led me to realize how vague the details I remember are, yet also how strangely exacting at the same time. I can typically remember the longitude and latitude of where I was sitting in a room while talking about certain subjects to certain people, but sometimes I forget to whom I was talking. My memory puts me in a very particular spot at a time so equally particular that I would feel confident writing it in permanent ink on a static time line. I have tattoos of every moment I fell in love, triumphed, died inside, lost a vital soul chunk, like rigid due dates in library books.

I have a special love affair with memories. Those I love the best – even if on the surface mundane – rage with the blood and guts, joy and glory of the people and things inside them.

Update Schmupdate

I have few words to spill out here (what's new?). I have been on a little roller coaster ride of processing the past week of crap (most of which has been detailed in my entry from a couple days ago) this weekend, so I've been a bit in hiding.

I just want to try to fulfill my promise of providing a few words (even if just here and there) for this space, which is turning out to be quite the disappointment really. But I guess that could simply be seen as all reflective.

Often things are not what they seem ...

Also, this seems a ridiculous thing to realize in the aftermath of this week, but I've realized the past little while that just when you think you have things figured out, something better comes along to make you rethink everything. Unfortunately, you have to truly believe you have thing figured out (and not just say you do in hopes of inviting something different), or the "real" won't reveal itself to you (or, as in this case, the "unreal" won't show its true colors).

Vague? I thought so, but it's only vague because I have no idea what will happen next and am enjoying taking life slow and undefined for now.

Just another day in the life ...

While normally I'm definitely sporting an internally-worn "I Heart New York" t-shirt, this week would definitely be a time I'd be wearing one with a broken heart on it. For one night only, I got to enjoy a very 80s version of this city (with some modern twists) that I thought was far behind us.

I decided to take a cab home on Wednesday night after a show I played, and after having late dinner with a friend. It was pouring rain, and my umbrella had been stolen by someone at the bar (even broken umbrellas are at a premium when you are out, far-ish from the subway without one), so I decided to take a cab home. It took almost an hour to hail one because of the rain (and my location fairly close to the FDR and at an epicenter sort of "all roads lead to somewhere" area on Houston near Avenue B).

I finally got picked up, and all seemed mostly normal, though the cab driver was a little creepier than usual. He asked if it was okay if we took 1st Avenue. Normally, I would not consent to this, because it's so much easier, faster (and often cheaper) to go up the FDR and then exit slightly north of me, but I thought perhaps he knew better than I did about traffic at that time of night (about midnight) on that particular day. I proceeded to check my e-mail on my iPhone and generally waste time. Usually I pay attention to details like the cabbie's name (I collect the funny ones in my head arsenal), but for some reason I was wet and not in the mood. I might mention at this point that I was wearing a pink prom dress (as is my way when I perform with Mister Badger).

Said cabbie proceeded to jot over at one point and get on the FDR. And this was where the fun began. He passed my exit and drove me to the farthest point in the Bronx on the East side (Pelham Bay), where he then stole my phone, my shoes and the cash I had on me (which was all of $20) at knife point (a very worn switchblade), through the pass-through window of the cab (which was an SUV cab, so at least I have that going for me as I try to get him caught). I'm not sure why he didn't take my bass, but I was left in the rain, quite a distance from the 6 train, which I took home shoeless.

When I got home (at about 3 a.m.), I called the police on my land line. I had a pretty vivid description of this person in my head, since I saw him in the light very clearly and not just in profile when I got into the cab all the way downtown, but I'm not optimistic. I've only had one other incident in NYC (a person inappropriately touched me a few blocks from my house while holding a knife to my throat), and he also took my shoes after it was over. I get the concept of it being extra insurance you can't easily run as well as a brilliant humiliation tactic, but the whole thing makes me angry. And in the previous case, absolutely nothing came of it (I still suspect that person was the one that, months later in 2007, turned into the rapist that was plaguing the Upper East Side).

This incident makes me tired of being alone to defend myself and failing quite miserably (though I guess I'm not dead, so that in and of itself is a success).