Flew into Atlanta today, nice flight with no one next to me and the plane fairly empty - Delta is a real downtrodden airline and the upside is their fleets tend not to be very full. I read two things from a recent New Yorker, a piece about a version of the Deerfield Academy, a posh boarding high school for boys in Western Massachusetts recreated by King Abdullah of Jordan who had attended the former as a boy - and then the start of a fiction story that takes place in Kansas (a place and part of the country that I find totally bewitching) called Kansas by Antonya Nelson. Just finished it, with the Braves game in the background, and after going for a nice swim on the 2nd story roof deck (overlooking Turner Field) swimming pool.

There was a cut off tshirt wearing vaguely mullet sporting dude by the pool taking pictures of Turner Field which loomed next door. I found the pool empty, if small, with a series of bobbles floating along a rope which roped off one end of the pool. There were several people lying out on beach chairs though it was getting to be evening and the skies were murky at best - still it's Atlanta so it's fairly warm out. There was a black kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, hanging around. He asked me if I was going to brave the water, indicating that it's cold. I tried it and told him it's not that bad. He seemed impressed as I wormed my way slowly in by descending slowly down the pool stair face forward - and told me the old addage about just jumping in. So I did - the water wasn't that cold - and then he did too. He was a real nice friendly kid, seemed really quite bored, and said he'd been staying there this whole week, and was leaving soon. It occured to me that he could be a Hurricane Katrina evacuee.

It was funny though, because I just wanted to get into swimming my laps (I'd untied the rope that cut the pool up slightly and tossed it off to one side) and the kid, clearly bored, would sometimes race me (I let him win once, though to have beat him I'd have had to really crank it up and I was into just the rhythm of the laps at that point and not speed) and sometimes walk along the side of the pool saying stuff to me - I couldn't hear him because I was doing the breast stroke (is that the normal standard one that everybody does?) and could hear nothing, but could see him walking along the side of the pool saying stuff to me every time I turned my head to my right and straight out of the water to inhale again. It was quite funny. He was a nice funny kid. I had a pretty rockin swim and we agreed to meet there again same time next night. I figure he was staying there for a few weeks and then moving on somewhere else with his family and probably quite bored with no one to play with. And me, on a business trip to another strange town where I know no one, because it beats sitting around alone in my fab but roachy new apartment. Motherfucking roaches, I bet they're having a field day in my new place while I'm away on business like a sucker. UGH.

Anyway, the next night, which was last night - I went back down there and he wasn't there. I wasn't in my swimming garb anyway - it wasn't really a warm night at that point and I just wanted to just chill and read my book about the mole people under neath the NYC subways (called "The Mole People") which I did do briefly. But I kept putting the book down on my lap and just closing my eyes (I was reclined in this beach chair that they have out by this pool area overlooking Turner Field in Atlanta) and just really soaking in the late afternoon sun (post-6pm sun, even, and this is mid-September already) and relaxing. Soon enough though, I went back inside and did who knows what up in my room before coming down the hotel bar like the night before, but this night getting on the Chardonnay (as opposed to the vodka and seltzers as I had done the night before) and ordering two apps instead of just the one the night before (buffalo shrimp as well as the chicken quesedillas) and getting pretty knackered on white wine. I smoked about a million cigarettes and had my wine and read the hell out of this book about the Mole People.

Pretty antisocial to read in a bar - especially a hotel bar that's full of business people just desperate to bullshit with each other - but I've done it before and I'll do it again. Once, in fact, at Jack Dempsey's bar in the East Village, this girl walked in with her girlfriends and yelled to me "Why are you reading at a bar? Why don't you go home and read?" - I really hated her for saying that because I was just trying to enjoy a drink and a read and not be alone all at the same time. Who the fuck was she? So anyway, occassionally I'll look around and the previous, the vodka, night there were some crazy Korean and German tourists or business people among the good ole boys. Speaking of good ole boys, back track to me and the kid done with our swim in the outdoor pool and in the elevator - there was an older black kid in there who works for the Holiday Inn as a bellboy or something. And then this really scary looking white hillbilly guy with a pretty gnarly mullet and cut off Steelers t-shirt. The Holiday Inn guy was giving my little 10 year old friend a hard time because the latter was putting on his tshirt in the elevator. Then when the kid got off the elevator the Holiday Inn guy was making small talk about the Steelers with the red neck guy, and I was thinking to myself, this crazy little mullet guy, how does he feel about this black dude trying to shoot the breeze with him? From his body language it looked like the hillbilly guy wanted to crawl out of his skin, but it could have been just me. I was pretty baked.

So last night, the chardonnay night, this really nutty looking older Korean dude with a natty old suit and a trucker hat sat next to me at the bar, lit a smoke (though my food had just arrived so I was a little annoyed, but kept my nose well in my book so he wouldn't talk to me) and he said (hilariously) "mmmmmmmm" about my food. I looked at him like he was the crazy man that he is and he said "Good?" - I said "yes" and thought about offering him a quarter of my dang quesadilla, but then thought this guy is goofy enough where he'll probably go for it, and I wanted the whole thing. So anyway, I'm reading and eating - and this incredibly hot blonde baby sits down next to this Korean dude, and there was an older heavy set local white guy on the other side of her. She had hair kind of like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas and a wife beater type tshirt - a nice Marylin mole on her cheek, really perfect skin and cheek bones. So the crazy Korean guy is babbling to her about some shit, I think complimenting her on her finger nails. And she was real friendly and loud and showing him how strong her nails are, and how they used to be much longer - so he takes her hand to inspect the nails, and then doesn't let go of her fingers. Just absentmindedly but firmly keeps hanging on to them at the bar, and she's sitting there like what the fuck? But then she removes her hand from him, and next time I look up from my book she's gone.

So tonight, forgetting all about my little black transient friend, I go down to the pool to listen to a bit of the ipod and enjoy the sunset as tomorrow I leave Hotlanta and make my way to Seattle for a four day four night stay. Precious few meeting and fuck all to do there because I know no one. But I am going to a Kimya Dawson concert on one weekend night - she's bringing her baby daughter for everyone to see - I found out about it on myspace. Anyway, so I go down the pool, and there's the Korean dude getting on in the elevator with me on my floor of all things - luckily I was wearing my Aviator shades so he couldn't see my eyes. It's hard for me to look at a crazy person in a normal way, and they sense this and sometimes get hostile. I asked him if he was at the bar the night before, and he said "Korean", so I said "I'm Russian" and he made an impressed sound. We both get off on level 2 where the pool is and lo, there's the kid.

He said he forgot the other night and I told him that I wasn't going to swim anyway, that it was too cold. Again this kid was wearing no shirt, just shorts. He told me it was cold, but that he'd had a dip earlier. A dip - he was a real funny kid always doing goofy stuff. Anyway, so the Korean guy, sitting in the beach chair, grabs the kid by the shoulders and sort of pats down his torso, or gives him a little shake or something, as though to say "you're a solid young man". Only in this country, we don't grab strange shirtless boys publically. But it didn't seem pervy or anything like that, guy's just nuts, and the kid seemed ok about it. I really wanted to swim. But tonight it was even cooler and no sun on the pool - though it is still sunny out. 6 37pm and the sun's still not set, in fact it's blasting straight into my hotel room now and pounding against the side of my face, I'm loving the vitamin D...

So soon the kid and I went inside because he'd told me they had a weight room - there was one indeed and he turned on the t.v. and asked me what I liked to watch. I told him I just flipped from channel to channel a lot but never stayed on anything because it all seemed bad - but that I liked baseball. I asked him the same thing and he said "just about anything as long as is entertainin' " - he spoke like a real down south guy, like you'd expect huck finn to talk or something. But a real nice kid. He adjusted my nordic track or whatever the hell you call those ski type machines, to a real high resistence because I couldn't figure out how to do it, and we shot the breeze some more, nothing too interesting. Eventually I bid him adeau and said that I had to go upstairs to get ready for my concert (it's true, I'm going to see Sufjan Stevens with a really pretty client of mine - actually she's possibly going with her boyfriend and definitely going with somebody - and I can only assume it's her dude - but she did enigmatically say yesterday after our lunch meeting that she would definitely see me tonight - so whatever, I'm sitting off by myself and hearing this artist tonight that I think I dig but I am quite new to, and then meeting her and whoever she's with I guess for some sort of a night cap) and we rode the elevator - he pushed 3 for him and 11 for me (I'm in room 1111) and then the elevator went down, to his chagrin. He tried to do what I suddenly rememberd trying to do as a kid, which was to mash the up buttons again as the elevator arrived at Lobby, hoping that the doors don't even open and that we are resuming our journey up, leaving our would-be companions in the dust - of course that never works) and two guys got on. The kid got off at 3, and did this deep bow, and said something like "have a pleasant evening" like an old butler or something. I'm not sure why he's displaced. I told him I'm going to Seattle in the morning, and he said he wasn't sure where he was going.

And now? I really should get ready for that dang gig - hate to drive my SUV downtown to the Fox Theater and pay for a parking lot, but it would probably cost even more to take a cab there and back, so I guess I'll drive. I've also got to pack - Seattle flight's early. Better soak up the rest of this sun, aint gonna be anymore where I'm goin'...

Sunburn is becoming kinda gruesome over on the right side of things, holy crap. Also, there's a chill in the air, or the hint of one, I dare say. Hard to get re-used to the mugginess after being on the West Coast, even when it's not hot it's sticky. I had a falling out with my gym today after swimming some laps - apparently the terms of my deal were totally unverifiable and the guy that signed me out was gone - gyms are a bit of a goon industry - d'uh! - anyway, and joined the YMCA in Long Island City. Huge pool, looking forward to it. Tomorrow night is the bachelor party for Clay, really looking forward to that. We're eating at Old Homestead which is legendary and I've always been curious about, and then going to Privelage in Chelsea or some strip joint downtown where bands play, I can't remember the name - you know, bachelor party stuff. This weekend I'm painting my place - I forget the name of the type of yellow, but I like it again.

Anyway, yesterday I wrote answers to one of those surveys that they have on myspace? You know, the ones that ask a million detailed questions and most of them naughty, that teenagers all over the world fill out and post, becoming interviewed and celebritous for the next half hour or so - and my randy ruminations got some kudos from people I consider to be interesting writers myself. But then today, on my way home from work, in the Wendy's on Queens Blvd., over a spicy chicken sandwich, I read the following about Jonathan Franzen's new autobiography, and it was an exact description of why my "survey" responses works as a little read, sentimental as it may be:

Franzen grew up nerdy and nervous in a small, comfortable town in Missouri called Webster Groves. Here are a few things that younger Jonathan was afraid of, accoding to the autobiography The Discomfort Zone: "spiders, insomnia, fish hooks, school dances, hardball, heights, bees, urinals, puberty, music teachers, dogs, the school cafeteria, censure, older teenagers, jellyfish, locker rooms, boomerangs, popular girls", and most of all, "my parents." When he wasn't afraid, Franzen was embarrassed.In places The Discomfort Zone reads like outtakes from a Judy Blume young-adult novel. On a church retreat, a girl caught Franzen cheating at cards and thereafter addressed him as "Cheater". He once publicly confused the words masturbation and menstruation. For a high school speech class, he brought in his stuffed Kanga and Roo toys to illustrate his talk about Australian wildlife.

"It's like, if I was making a list of things that I don't want to talk about and don't want to write about publicly, these would be at the top of it," Franzen says, "That's the organizing principle: precisely the things that I think are least suitable for public consumption are the ones that I wanted to find a way to write about publicly, and to try to forgive myself for, by making myself a laughable figure."

So in the spirit of that, I'm pasting the "survey" - what seems to be the pickle now is how to write, and purely fictionalize the writing so that I am making up and telling a story, not just retelling memories that are real. The unchanged names are even a part of the guilty pleasure of these memoryettes - but to truly make stuff up seems so hard. I might end up being an anonymous blogger in order to really let myself go and get really into the writing. Change the names and don't site myself, and then just really write [and that's what is happening right here right now, I'm reposting this into my anonymous blog and changing round all the names. -ed].

Because this is too confessional to keep up unless a conscious effort is made to fictionalize the writing. Anyway, here it is with the obvious embellishments etc.....

1. Who was your first dance date?

This tall dark haired girl with thin limbs and big teeth - I was infatuated with her. She was about a foot taller than me about maybe about 15, I was 10 or so. It was summer camp and by the time we had our dance, I was a blabbering wreck who held her fingers in mine all wrong (two fingers per gap instead of one) but I thought she'd vanish if I let go. I was nervously blathering to her about some cabin mate of mine that apparently moaned all night like he was having an orgasm. I did'nt know what an orgasm was yet, but it was a story I'd heard earlier in the day. She expressed mock something - surprise, being impressed, tolerance.

2. Who was your first roommate?

This black dude Terence Black from Roxbury in Boston. This was my first semester at UMass Amherst. He'd been shot and was one of those angry political guys. Unfortunately his frat-where-you-get-branded and nation of Islam-like focus and self discipline slipped (via me?) as he started to smoke doob and drink, and would come back wrecked and belligerent, ranting until I got out of my top bunk with my pillow and went to crash with friends. Some nights were better than others. He did talk at the TV while we watched Letterman together about all the racist crackers, and defended me when my best friend at the time slept with the girl I loved. But mostly he batted me around gently (but still horribly) and pretty much told me how things would be. I moved out the very next semester. Thanks, Dennis, for teaching me the skillz of getting a large burocratic organization to do exactly what it is I need, and fast.

3. What alcoholic beverage did you first drink? Creme de Menthe, in high school, in Quebec City, with a school trip. I got drunk fast, of course, and proceeded to try and prove to myself and everybody how not-drunk I was, by talking to them about a load of nonsense and making it obvious how drunk I was. Back at the hotel the German teacher Wally Heimlich and this girl I was infatuated with did a bit of an intervention "I know you like me, but I am seeing someone" (she was in fact with this Risky Business Tom Cruise looking cat, and they were both equally good looking, but I still loved her) and the night ended with me weeping in the arms of Mr Heimlich while he comforted me. It could have been a weird Mr Antolini from Catcher in the Rye moment, a bit flitty - but really it was just a nerd who had got drunk for the first time and still felt hopelessly nerdy - more so in fact. Anyway, it was a pretty freakin surreal thing to have happened, in hindsight.

4. What was your first job?Delivering the daily paper, 79/80, I was 10/11 years old. The scene? Pre-dawn Cambridge Mass. Thanks mom and dad for driving me around. I found memories in the long darkened corridors of those Cambridge apartment buildings, thinking how this or that particular smell, of whatever specific cookery, defined that floor of that building and will always remind the people that live there of that time in their lives. Usually their entire lives, which was what sort of made it terrifying, the smells of other people's lives. It made me used to want to drop the newspapers and run screaming outta there.

5. What was your first car?

first one I drove was my parents first car in the States, a 78 Chevy Nova. Brown. I totalled it in the rain going too fast down Harvard Street towards Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner Brookline. I wailed into the car infront of me - it was fine, their spare tire suspended on the rear of their jeep like car - but the Chevy front was accordioned. They were plenty nice, the cops were gruff but nice, and my parents resigned that this car now needs to be cleaned and gotten rid of, and a new one would need to be obtained. There are family photos of my dad removing things from the so familiar brown wreck, wearing a look of resignation and weariness. This is the stuff you hear about living with teenagers, and good thing the boy didn't die - is what he may have been thinking when those pictures were being taken.

6. When did you go to your first funeral?

Still never. My grandparents died one by one in Moscow, but I was already in the States by then, and there's no way you can get a visa to travel to Russia as quickly as people get buried. So I missed both their funerals. Ive been to both their cemetary plots though. Everyone else keeps not dying.

7. What was your first broken bone?

I fractured my frist playing kick ball in grade school - that was a pretty goofy reason to wear a brace - oh and I also broke my right hand punching a wall in a hotel in Paris. the good news is that large, fist-shaped dent in the wall of that economy hotel is surely still there.

8. Who was your first grade teacher?

Some young, severe, attractive girl and this was in Moscow. Everyone wore uniforms, had specific ways to raise your hand, and generally behave impecabbly. There's no fucking about in a Russian school, especially when you are that little. I was restless and playing around, tossing the chalk rag up and down until the teacher came in and the chalk rag landed right on her head. I was mortified, but she was beside herself - as though it was a jar of maggots that suddenlywas upturned onto her pate. Her reaction threw me into a fit of dread - but then she removed the offending cloth and collected herself, and class began.

9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?Hard to remember, but almost definitely from Moscow to Uzhgorod, which is in the Carpathian mountains in the region between Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Russia and Poland. It's where by grandparents lived. My grandfather was the town butcher. He gladly used to let me help him wash his fancy car. He kept chickens in the bathtub, so a little boy goes into the bathroom to pee, sees this live chicken in the tub, tried to play and prod at the bird who makes some perterbed sounds. A few hours later, it is now our dinner.

10. When did you sneak out of your house for the first time, who was it with?

I was raised in such a way where sneaking out was not necessary. I didn't have the right to stay out all night as a kid, but if I was going to go see a friend, no one ever objected.

11. Who was your first best friend and are you still friends with them?

No, God I've gone through many many many best friends in my life, probably more than I can count. There were best friends in Russia though I dont remember them, best friends the year I lived in LA as a recent immigrant (hello Misha and Genya), in grade school, once I learned enough English to hang with the cool kids, I had two new best friends losing along the way the two less cool best friends I had had prior. In high school it was more social climbing, until the last year I was well entrenched with the all mighty click of the coolest kids. But it didn't last long. Then there were a couple of serious relationships and those girls were my best friends, but not after it was over. I guess Debby, who was a grad student who spoke russian and looked after us, the overwhelming mass of Soviet emigrees flooding the Los Angeles school system, became my friend back then (we made each other laugh) and is still - best friend? One of them for sure - but definitely the person I've been friends with the longest. She's a little over 50 and I'm 37. But at the time I was 8 and she was 21 - she was a wild one and treated me like her wild son. Together we would drive down Hollywood Blvd. cranking the dance music out her car radio so loud that it was all for adrenoline, and making each other crack up at the inappropriateness of it all.

12. Where was your first sleepover?

Sleepovers go back further than a child remembers things, surely. There were many when I was really little, one with us junior high guys reminds me of waking up and Dave waking up, and Andrew Maddon coming over, and us talking dreamily about girls, and all their illicit bits, the things that suddenly mattered in the world more than anything else.

13. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?

If I have a real bad day, I'll absolutely spare anyone else the gory details. In fact, I seldom phone anyone for any reason - hate the phone. Text baby text! And email is still good

14. Whose wedding were you in the first time?

Nelson Enteleira and Lisa Obral, my Azorian friends in SE Mass, or, "Little Portugal" I performed some live rock with my old band Humbert, to which Nelson and Lisa danced joyously. During the wedding itself, I walked extremely stiffly with the procession to accept the cracker in the mouth by the priest at the end of the cueue. I think someone told me recently that I did'nt need to accept the offering of this thin, small, flat and round bread, but I didn't want to be rude.

15. What is the first thing you do in the morning?

Get the coffee on and check internet - then pray and do a huge bong hit.

16. What was the first concert you ever went to?

Little River Band at some outdoor tent thing - it was pretty cool. Then shortly after I saw Aerosmith with my mom at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. I'd won them on a radio station, as I won so many things by being the right number caller on station give aways. Not so much a fan and didn't know what we were instore for. People tried to give us ear plugs while they laughed at us openly, as we grimly made our ways down to our incredible seats. Lights go down. Band starts playing. Total pandemoneum (and this isn't Aerosmith yet, just the opener, but no one cares) when suddenly, as is customary, the drummer threw a stick into the crowd and it got caught firmly in my mom's hair. I stood back doing nothing, as was my wont, but delirious metal fans swarmed my mother's head fighting for the precious souveneer. My mother, thinking it was a bomb, thanked her rescuers from underneath their flapping, pulling and seeking hands. We left shortly after. The staff at the Orpheum laughed hartily again that we didn't make it beyond one song. But we saw all we needed to see.

17. First tattoo or piercing?

pierced my left ear once, in high school, and wore it as a badge of coolness in high school. Towards the end of college got another stud in the same ear lobe and then stopped wearing them and certainly didn't get tattoos. My ethos became that a real artist or a true rocker doesn't need to do the obvious things, like crazy clothes and haircuts, in order to be good and great and to rock. In hindsight, I think I may have been wrong. Still, I'm against any jewelry on a man - rings, chains, necklaces, piercings, etc. - you can be a bad-ass simply by the way that you roll, not any of those external adornments.

18. First celebrity crush?

Marsha Brady (or whoever played her - Susan McCormick?)....she was the bossy older sister, but also a total waif and babe with attitude. And she dealt with guys like me, the younger two Brady boys. She became the "IT" girl

19. Age of first real kiss and with who?

18, already after high school (the horror), on Marthas Vinyard, in my once-in-a-lifetime moment of having cajones, I drunkenly took by the hand a very pretty Lola Clementine out to the porch of the house, and we proceeded to suck face for what seemed like ages. I even kissed bit of nuts out of her mouth that she had previously been snacking on. The next day I told her I had never kissed anyone before her.

20. First crush?

had little ones here and there but none were too real because I was too shy to speak with any girls I found attractive, the more attractive the less chance I'd ever talk to them - a crush means more than just leering, though I still try to ignore that rule.

21. First love?

Julie Levitz-Hammer, first everything, the high school femme fatale, she made boys into men and every dude in Brookline was obsessed with her - we were together and now there's no contact. She calls herself Julia now and probably has a kid and husband and has cut herself off, unsurprisingly, from her lurid, steamy, and yet innocent history... where ever you are now Julie, I luvz ya still!

I posted new old songs on this site today, ones to join "How To Be Alone", and it made me want to write something. Barring playing the guitar (beyond absentmindedly strumming "Get Back In Line" by the Kinks, I never play anything on the guitar) I thought it had to finally be time for another blog.

This guy from high school that I was best friends with really early on, but not the 2nd half - the best friend at the time with whom I played my first rawk. He on drums and me on electric guitar, we did the most elemental mountain man riff, really retarded, but it was heavy and loud and it was good.

Anyway, very strange to see him on myspace, what he looks like now - oh and he also lives in this same New England town where my parents live - a bit odd. Anyway, he wrote this thing upon discovering me up there through another friend I had in my network and vaguely remembered, who maybe found me because I was on that reality TV show Fabulous Glare At the Regular Feller! a few years ago.

Anyway, this old best friend as he was today, he loved my new song and was very much reminiscing about what a nice guy I had been, and how he let me down or something like that. Something I didn't recall at all. I remembered ceasing rather suddenly yet gradually to be best friends with him anymore, nor our crazy petite charismatic but really very crazy other best friend - and finally, at the very end of high school, my best friend was Moses, at the very top of the high school social feedbag.

In another myspace exchange with the guy today, he mentioned to me something the original person who found me on myspace because of the reality show I was on and tipped this dude - let's call him Omar - off to me, had already told me - was that they went together the other night, with a girl whose name didn't ring a bell - to see this other girl whose name also didn't ring a bell (!) book signing for her 4th novel, which took place in our old home town, and referenced a million high school memories and all these kids that hung out around the school, and all these specific little things and quirks all of which were real. I thought that sounded kind of cool - the only sort of writing I've ever been capable of since I've been out of high school has also been based on very much real stuff.

So Omar rants kind of funnily and surprisingly about this girl, this author (who I google image searched and found her web site - she's super cute!) (but alas happily married with a baby in Maine somewhere sigh) and how she referenced things he remembers, things about our immediate social circle and specific memories that he recognized himself in, and recognized our really badly crazy but funny little friend in, and all sorts of stuff that Omar ranted she didn't write really, just retold. We gave her fodder that she simply memoired and called it a novel. I guess that was Omar's point.

Anyway, I seem to have no point, for that was pretty much the story. I wrote back to him that most good fiction is just the retelling of real stuff, and very few masters and craftspeople like Nabokov, Amis and Delillo write stuff out of thin air, make up stories not based on any real memories they have or things they experienced directly. But that's not true - you can tell Salinger writes pretty personally and the stuff seems like stuff he's really seen - Capote too, hugely, and they're great master writers too. I seem to be obssessing with this question - whether great prose can't just be the lyrical rehashing of things that really happened.