High Line

A dreamily beautiful day in NYC.  Mother’s Day at home in England.  My Mother’s sweet bf texted me so that I didn’t forget.

Met Ian for lunch.  Discussed press strategy for next month.   After lunch we walked the High Line which was such a treat.  We continued our afternoon in the West Village window shopping.  Marc Jacobs Men has moved which I found oddly disconcerting.

To tell you the truth I was less than great company.  Ian left me to my massage.   90$.   I sat in the steam room on my own sweating out the poison.  Maybe the Scientologists are right about the emotionally therapeutic effects of sweating.  I certainly felt less toxic after my stint in the steam.

I am being IRONIC about Scientology.

I had organized to meet Sean at 6pm but he was late so, thinking he had flaked, I started walking east.  He finally called as I was passing the O’Toole Building on 12th St near to where Joe and I lived when we lived in New York.

I have always liked that building.  It was designed by Albert C. Ledner in 1963.  Even though it now looks, from afar, terribly grubby…and from the street like something impregnable..it is a charismatic building up for demolition, that some are seeking to preserve.  Is it worth preserving?

In as much as it was one of the first buildings in the city to break with the Modernist mainstream it maybe deserves a second chance.  It is a significant work of architecture.

It was built to house the National Maritime Union, as the era of longshoremen and merchant sailors was nearing an end. Its glistening white facade and scalloped overhangs, boldly cantilevered over the lower floors, were meant to conjure an ocean voyage and a bright new face for the union.   Its glass brick base, once the site of union halls, suggests an urban aquarium.

Perhaps, as else where, the recession may end up saving this building if the West Village historical society doesn’t.

I digress.   I found myself standing on that corner at 7pm on a Sunday night.  After a few minutes everything around me just melted away.  The people, the cars…I found myself enjoying a rare moment of city silence.  Peace.

Sean arrived and we walked.

Dinner with Woodrow and Dan at Takihachi on Ave A.  I made a paper man out of the wrapper a straw comes in.   See above.

A cranberry and soda at that gay bar opposite.   I forgot the name.  Apparently Anderson Cooper’s boy friend owns it.  Or, is that an urban myth?  Anyhow, the experience was decidedly lackluster.  I looked at the vintage gay porn on the TV monitors and wondered why we play gay porn in gay bars.  Do we just want to remind ourselves why we are there, or…why we should be there?  The images of great gobs of cum shooting out of glistening penises seared into my brain all the way home.

Date night tonight.

Do you want to see something funny?

Don’t they look terrible on me?  Those severe glasses?