I ran into The Coffee Shop Girl on the street yesterday. It's hard to know who reads this blog regularly, and judging from my analytics, more than half of my hits come from people doing random searches for pictures of J-Lo's poon-tang, so if I mention "The Coffee Shop Girl," only a handful of people know who I'm talking about. Probably just as well.

Girls are afraid of my basement. Jasmin thought she heard ghosts there once while she was doing laundry. She skidattled back upstairs in a hurry. I always tell her she can do laundry down there any time she wants, but instead she lugs her heavy bags to the laundromat. Yesterday, Britta said that if it were her basement, she'd be afraid to go down there, too. Whenever someone comes to read the meter they get spooked by the mannequin. Raymi said she thought she was gonna get AIDS by walking around barefoot on the cement. Kimmy never even went down there at all. I think Denver maybe liked it a little, but she's kinky like that.

My brain has the faint smell of a burnt-out resistor. I'm trying to find a new place to live and trying to whittle down my existence into its bare essentials in the process. Adrift on a raft that's slowly sinking...tossing off a thing at a time to stay afloat. Sentimentality, thick and dense, pulls me under with every white-capped wave. Why is it so much easier to accumulate things than it is to get rid of them?

This might be a long post. But it's an important one, with a lot of mystery unraveled and questions answered. There won't be any deep dark secrets that those who know me don't already know, but I've never written about these things quite so directly in this blog before. So bear with me.

When the clouds hang low and thick like a wool army blanket, the light from the Empire State Building reflects off the sky and makes it look like fluorescent light behind frosted glass. I imagine sitting on a fire escape or a rooftop and looking down at myself. Watch myself do the stupid things I do. I look down and shake my head and think: "That guy is a fucking idiot."

"What are you looking for, Jamie?" she asked.

I laughed, "You're kidding, right?"

I've been told by people who know me in real life that I seem "different" in my blog writing than I do in person.

"Or maybe it's just that in real life you don't say everything that's on your mind," she said.

“Well, of course not. Who -- aside from maybe a cokehead -- ever says everything that's on their mind?”

After dinner, Brian and I went for a coffee and some dessert. We walked to a little place in his neighborhood where a cute Italian girl works as a cashier. I had been with Brian when he'd met her at a restaurant a few months ago. She and a friend of hers had been sitting at the next table, and by the end of our meal, Brian had gotten her phone number.

I don't know if any of you reading this will think I'm crazy or not, but the guy at the border crossing sure did.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I had a little birthday dinner at my parents' house in New Jersey last night. My mother wasn't too excited about my new haircut. "Oh. It's— different ." But my fourteen-year-old niece says it's cool, so that's enough for me.

Yesterday was a perfect day. The afternoon was all about skulls and pillows and headless dolls at the flea market.

I went to Brian's art opening last night. I spent most of the time hanging around with his friend Chris. Chris was telling me that he'd been fishing in the East River lately and how he caught a foot-long flounder. In the middle of his story, we overheard two girls talking about the art. The taller or the two was explaining the meaning of the paintings to the shorter one.

Last night I went over to my friend Tim's for the usual Wednesday night hootenanny. Tim has a three-ring binder full of obscure hillbilly songs, and we sit down with a couple of guitars, a couple of beers, and work our way through it. "You know this one?" "Nope."

The bartender last night had a quirky accent. I couldn’t quite place it as she spoke to the drunk girl who’d been at the bar all day interviewing prospective roommates.

When we were kids, she'd punch my shoulder, straight and strong, like a guy.

Another weird New Jersey day, only this time I had a partner. The beautiful and ever-popular Ali said yes to a Sunday drive, so I swung by her place to pick her up, and we drove down to Asbury Park.

Well, I suppose it's pretty big news. I mean, the blackout and all. I was at work in Manhattan when it all went down. My co-workers all live in Brooklyn, so they were all set for a group hike over the bridge home. But me? I live in Brooklyn, sure, but I had no food at home and saw no pressing need to get back there. I just figured I'd stay the night at work. I mean, what difference did it make? But by the time the residual air conditioning wore off and I was sweltering alone there in the darkening office, the idea of a shower sounded like a pretty good reason "why not." Screw this," I said, "I'm walking."

Fireworks and barbecues, mosquitoes and mojitos that never got made. Sunny day poolside and skinny dipping at night. Simone's parents have a house out in Jersey where they raise horses. 40-some odd horses on 50-some odd acres. She had a barbecue there on Saturday, and Jaime-girl invited me to come along.