I really haven't been able to type. Still can't, really. Crazily, one of the fingers on my right hand seems to be the on/off switch (or 1 of them) for the eye spasm. I may put some audio posts up between now and the time I'm able to fully resume my digital (in every sense) responsibilities. Better go before I bloooow.


(Written on Saturday.)

If I stay away from highly populated areas, like the street in front of Mile End Station or the Stratford mall, a walk can be a useful respite from the tension of staying home to reduce tension. Better, I think, to embark upon multiple outings of lesser length than to go on one long walk which could lose its potency, mid-excursion.

Additionally, more frequent egressions help break up those lengthy, in-home detensification sessions, which also suffer from diminishing effects. (In fact, both can become a cause of that which they seek to cure.)

Anyway, I'm happy to report that my morning walk was nigh on perfect, proving without a shadow of a doubt that I could get to the big supermarket and back in time to watch the +1 rebroadcast of Ironside. My afternoon walk, however, (somehow) found me at that damned Stratford mall and its pain-inducing hubbub of low-income shopping frenzy.

Meanwhile, I desperately had to go to the bathroom due to all the water I drink to make sure my tensed muscles are protectively lubricated. I almost didn't make it to Morrisons in time!

By the time I got to the men's room door, I forgot to be calm and, leaping toward the piss outlet, I self-jostled my eyelid into what eventually became an almost full-forehead cramp.

Note to self:
Shorter afternoon walks.

Man, I try hard to recuperate but those long, regenerative sleeps sometimes feel (at least) as potentially fatal as they do regenerative. Fortunately, I also try hard not to completely ignore beautiful days.

So, I walked.

Outside!

And found a big supermarket. (Joy.)

Ate my sardine sandwich beside a beautiful waterway that led eventually -- though there were no guarantees -- right back home to me.

And the warm, frequent showers that relax my vibrating lids.

Feeling much better, I reintroduced masturbation and the gym into my life -- in both cases, gently.

Unfortunately, to go to the gym, I was forced to leave the house. (I've got a professionally-installed masturbation parlor at home, so I never have to leave to go to the masturbatoreum as most others do.)

The problem with leaving the house is that, on the verge of recovery, I get restressed to the point of near-crippling upper facial tightness by the invariably loathsome behavior of the others in the London street.

To remain calm, I found I had to repeat over and over in my head, "Let them win, let them win, let them wi . . . "

Seeing as how my quest for pure and perfect love -- or at least someone to have a donut with -- has thus far consisted mostly of me saying, "I'm on a quest for love," I don't see why it actually has to take a back seat to the warm showers and culinary asceticism of face pain mitigation that now comprise the majority of my oh, so cluttered existence. Therefore, I am declaring the quest back on!

I am, if you will, a man on a mission.

Now, should I lie down, take a another shower, make some more coffee or eat my leafy greens?

My quest for love has taken a back seat to my quest for a pain-free face.

I combatted the stress in a house of cruciferous vegetables, carrots, fish, wholegrains and eggs, on a foundation of strawberries and bananas, accompanied by refreshing glasses of soda with citrus fruit.

And 4/5 of a bottle of wine.

It seems when I page down with my right thumb, it causes my eyelid to go into a spasm. Fortunately, I have eaten about 10 eggs in about 40 hours.

Eggs, as we know, contain everything necessary to nurture a chicken to birthability from nothing. The egg came first. It is essentially the chicken's creator -- God in a shell. A wise congregation would pray to the egg.

Of course, I need more than one egg to regenerate as I am larger than a chicken. But I still have at least 2 left. So, when my body asks itself for the basic stuff of life in order to reknit my eyelid into a tear-shrouding model of "just born" stability. everything it needs will be as available as Yoo-Hoo in a well-stocked motel fridge.

I guess, in theory, by eating enough eggs, you could regrow a limb.

Or a wing.

I only hope I haven't eaten too many. I don't want to wake up covered with feathers.

That could only be bad as I sleep with a synthetic pillow.

A combination of manual labor and stress has created a situation where even typing makes my face hurt. Turning a newspaper's pages tugs at my face in painful ways.

Even turning at all.

Makes it hard to go out.

Thus, I am still not in love.

However, I have had chocolate. I read somewhere that doctors have successfully treated brain injuries with dark chocolate.

Well, I at least glanced at something that seemed to say that. So, I figured, when faced with the choice of fruit and 100 grams of dark chocolate, that it would work for face injuries too. After all, the face is close to the brain. Though they don't always get along.

And the body, as we know, perceives chocolate as love. (I have a great interest in the burgeoning field of chocolate science.)

So, this face thing is really a win-win situation.

The story is told of a guy who comes up to a Muslim man in the street and tells him, "You gotta help me. I've lost everything looking for a woman to call my own -- my house, my job . . .   I've lost my life's savings trying to woo and to please, but to no avail. Can you spare me any money? Any amount, large or small, I'm begging you. I'm alone and I need to survive." (He breaks down and cries.)

Well, the Muslim man is sensitive to the other man's plight but he is wise to the ways of humanity and he says to the beggar, "I'd like to help but if I give you the money you need to survive, how do I know you won't spend it on a woman?"

And the beggar says, "Oh, I got goat money."

Walked through the Orthodox Jewish part of Hackney on my way back from the disappointing Uprise and Punch and Judy festivals. (Uprise referred to was not, sadly, Judy's revenge against the abusive Punch.) Musta been evening prayer time, as the men were in their black finery, with beards and hats at peak of perfection.

Every so often, I would find a clump of Muslim men instead, congregating outside their houses of worship in finest whites, with beards and caps at peak of their perfection.

Due to the stark monochrome iconography, yet fundamental similarity, walking this Godly gauntlet was like being inside a devout version of Spy vs. Spy (from MAD magazine, silly). But then I saw a group of not-yet-bearded older boys in their finery and was momentarily unable to determine if they were Muslims or Jews.

Apparently, they had not yet fully differentiated. (It's science!)

Be that as it may, I'm still not in love. But I was probably close to several Yiddishe matchmakers. And some Muslim fathers willing to sell their daughters for a goat.

Unfortunately, I cannot afford a goat.

If I had that kind of cash, I wouldn't be lonely.

Still, perhaps I should return to the neighborhood soon.

I just gotta get me some goat money.

As if in answer to my query, while out I met an absolutely beautiful research scientist, so there are, obviously, ever more brilliant women in the world just waiting to be found and known.

On the other hand, I knew that already. My question was whether I would find someone who is intellectually extraordinary to love me. And there was no particular reason to believe this woman had any undue interest in me. So, I guess the encounter was just a partial answer to my query.

The useless part.

The part I already knew.

Gave me hope, though.

That's how stupid I am.

I feel capable of being in love.

Which has put me in mind of the impressive number of extraordinarily intelligent women I've known. Few (if any) of whom are likely to again be accessible to me in any significant way.

Will I find that again in someone? Have I? What if I don't?

Is good enough good enough?

What does good enough even mean?

Only one thing I want right now and it's not going to happen today or maybe ever. Don't want to get up and face a world without it.

Too many hours of sleep and breathing issues. More, though.

And more.

Red-rimmed eyes. Feel like shit.

Gotta get a grip.

I don't want to buy a new bathing suit.

It's not just the money but also the going and the getting.

I guess I could cut down one of my two pairs of jeans but -- as of the other day -- only one of them has a working waist clasp . The other is now only usable for gag purposes and domestic activities. I probably need the first pair for not being naked.

True, during The Big Clean, I did find my uncle's old trunks. But they're much too large. Plus the lacy innards are mangled and the string is oddly inserted.

If only I hadn't spent money on those new poor people's, plastic sneakers the other day.

But then, it's not just the money.

It was very frustrating when, while taking a shower, I couldn't steal some of a housemate's body cleansing product as intended due to the realization that grabbing it would leave the bottle covered in telltale wetness.

Next time 'round, I opened the bottle pre-shower. Only to find the shampoo/hair gel was actually conditioner. Which would not freshen and cleanse as required.

I used it anyway as I had no alternative.

Figured it would at least smell good.

There's this bizarre notion that if we can replicate the diet of our hunter/gatherer forebears (I wonder if Goldilocks is included in that unusually large bear figure), we can live forever.

Yet none of those guys is alive today, as far as I'm aware. And for man to have had enough evolutionary advantage to survive, he needn't have been capable of immortality, merely the ability to live long enough to procreate and nurture the next generation of diers.

Yet, I will likely today be going to the gym, just like Cro-Magnon man as he weathered the ice age all those months ago.

But, you know, that's completely different.

It's not the grasping that is the search for man's perfect diet. (Which, by the way, is based in the word "die".)

Mouses call for extraordinary measures around the houses. Or in my rented room, at any rate. It's amazing how the scampering of little paws (do mouses have paws?) can motivate you to discard the detritus of your recent (and not so recent) existence.

And to do laundry too. (If without soap.)

Thank goodness I had the intermittent strains of The Zombies to bring brightness to the dank, dusty day.

I think I even saw a mouse dancing.

But I wonder where the entry point is. I need to plug it up with Brillo.

Otherwise, there's probably gonna be a gluin' in this town.

And that won't be pretty. (Would be sad to lose not just a mouse but a horse.)

Boy, it was amazing how good I felt. Even with no sauna the previous day.

And you know, I tried to replicate everything essential about that day, to ensure that my sense of ease would continue.

I ate similarly, moved similarly. Drank a little more, though, even though I didn't want to. (Felt I needed to.)

Yet even doing everything the same, I lost ground; was sliding backward.

Because what I could not replicate was the now-waning sense of another's touch.

Plus I had a mouse (at the very least).

It was autumn in Southwest London.  The kids and their parents were leaving school in the windy late afternoon as increasingly colorful leaves began, less than tentatively, to fall. I thought how I didn't remember autumn being this beautiful when I was living in SW a couple of years ago at this time.

I'd spent most of the day with an attractive woman I met the night before. Despite my poverty, I was somehow the one who had the cash when we got to her place and so had to pay for the cab. Which meant I needed to ask her for money when I left in order to get where I needed to go. 

And where I needed, or at least intended, to go was the gym. However, by the time I got to the train station, along with seven pounds of my newest friend's change, I realized I had left the bright orange Sainsbury's bag with my bathing suit in it at the pub the night before. 

Or somewhere.

So, no point going to the gym. Without any loin covering, I couldn't even take a steam..

I considered going back whence I'd come, but I figured that would be wrong. 

So, I decided to walk from wherever the hell I was in the Borough of Richmond to Central London.

It took a few hours. I made lots of stops to buy fruit and sandwiches. (I did have seven pounds.)

I even enjoyed a selection of samples at Whole Foods Market, just like in the old days.

And ended up having my workout after all.

The walk was my cardio. Lifting tables and chairs setting up my friends' comedy club was my resistance.

There was no sauna.

I went to the gym, partly to be physically fit, partly to ameliorate the stress in my right eyelid. It was working, too, until that fucking personal trainer came over to give me his questionable advice.

Of course, I tried to nip it in the bud, saying, before he could say much to me, "I don't need any instructions," (or something similar) but he wouldn't take no for an answer, asking if I was sure.

Well, my original reaction (in my mind) was "what part of get lost don't you understand?" However, now that I think about it, he was actually being quite disrespectful.

In asking if I was sure, he was basically calling me an idiot.

Regardless, I didn't think of that then. It was his simple refusal to go away quickly and quietly that enraged me over and over again, retightening and reinflaming the very muscles I had come to coddle.

That arrogant prick didn't know or care what I was going for. Coming over was fine but once I told him I didn't need his help, he should have been on his merry way toward some other unmuscled boy in need of pectoral sagacity..

Yes, I could have gone to a masquerade party. But I had neither the time nor the money (nor the skill) to fashion or acquire something suitable. And, you know,  I just don't want to be the guy anymore who's wandering around in regular clothes, surrounded by full participants in life's rich pageant of pretend.

There are guys who are that guy, of course. They're supposed to be outsiders. But I wanna play all the games.

I'm not saying I haven't enjoyed things from that perspective in the past. I've liked being surrounded by imagery even when unable to be a part of the surrounding motif. I might even have been that guy this time but for a sense of physical fragility that required coddling and care.

No telling what the effect of socializing would have been.

I could have helped. But it might have hindered.

So, I slept.

I didn't even walk to the local sukkah. 

The girls on the bus didn't appear to understand my use of the expression (or slices of it) "This bread is so good, it's like cake."  In fact, they seemed unwilling to accept that cake comes ahead of bread in the natural order of flour-based foodstuffs.

But can it be denied that, if bread tastes like cake, it has outperformed its baker's intentions and placed itself in cake's superior realm?  It matters not if one likes bread better than cake. That's simply the way it is. Yet one of the girls implied a belief that cake was not necessarily the preferred baked good in a bread vs. cake hierarchical showdown.

For God's sake, what kind of nation is this?

After Bermondsey and the gym, I showed up to labor for cash, sadly accepting of the fact that I would not hear the final, lengthy bleating of the shofar as the Gates of Heaven are closed for business or the seals on the books of humans' fates are hot waxed or, you know, whatever. And then, just like in the religious movies, there was, unexpectedly at the toil site, additional labor. And I suddenly realized I might just get to hear the rabbi make like Diz after all.

Typically, however, I hung around maybe a little too long, fearing I would get paid less if I went. And then . . . I bolted. 

Hustled through crowded Leicester Square, pushing others aside to get to the tube, walking, then running from Warren Street toward the Central Synagogue off Great Portland Street, cursing myself the entire way for lingering in search of a few extra bucks.

Meanwhile, Jews were heading in the opposite direction, which worried me. And on top of that, I was sweating and coarsely dressed as I arrived at a synagogue that had been catering to men in expensive gray suits since sometime in the nineteenth century.

I flashed my ticket. There was confusion.

They let me in.

I rushed to the sanctuary. And . . .

The shofar was well and truly blown. I'd made it in time.

I may, in fact, have been touched by an errant drip of hot wax from the hand of God.

Or a drop of my own sweat.

Either way, I returned to my toil.

And was paid in full.

Since I had to do manual labor to make some cash come not-quite-nightfall, I wasn't going to be able to hear the final Shofar blast of the atonement season. And I was already eating as my fast had ended fast. So, I figured the holidays, for me, were over and decided to walk toward the Bermondsey Street Fair, first stop of my post-atonement life.

I'd wanted to attend Yizkor, of course, so I could appropriately remember my mother and the other, somewhat more distant relatives I make a point of remembering -- especially if they have no one else to remember them -- but I was far from the synagogues I knew and there was no reason why I couldn't remember my mother in the secular realm (it was the remembering that would matter to her). So, yeah, I was going to Bermondsey.

As a matter of fact, on the way, I made a point of walking past that boarded-up East End synagogue I'd tried to attend on Rosh Hashonah, wanting to take a picture of its deadness on the holiest day of the year.

But, um . . . the door.

It opened.

Just a crack.

And there were people in there.

Praying.

It was a tiny congregation, filled with a single representative, maybe two, of every type of Jew that lived in the area during the East End's goldman age -- a modern Orthodox rabbi of about 60, a stocky, heavy-coated/babushka lady, a younger woman with baby, father and young son, two 20-something Chassids, various sizes and shapes of established men of the community . . .

It could easily have been a bunker in which to ride out the end of an era but it was, instead, the last lighted window in a world gone dark. Shoots of sun coming through the skylight illuminated the continuation of a way of life that once lit so much more. And once inside the light, you did not have to think about the darkness without.

In fact -- glorioski -- I even got called up to the Torah.

A mitzvah! (They didn't have to know about the eating thing.) My Hebrew name was spoken aloud.

In a synagogue in the East End of London, where Jews once reigned (somewhat ) supreme, the name of a Brooklyn boy and his Bronx father -- Chanan Yaakov ben Meyer Simcha -- rang through the East London air like so many Bow Bells.

Afterward, the men, of course, shook my hand.

And when the time came for the memorial service, I offered my mother's name up to to sail similarly through the English air.

But, uh, I didn't know it in Hebrew. So, I had to say it in English.

The rabbi translated it -- probably wrongly as there's a lot of leeway in the English name/Hebrew name translating game. But, you know, I had already said her name aloud in that sanctuary.

Her real name, not some Hebrew equivalent.

So, I folded up my borrowed tallis and continued my inexorable march toward the Bermondsey Street Fair.

I fasted during the night. Hence the term, "breakfast."

I fasted last week when I had no money.

But I'm not fasting today.

I'm claiming the health exemption.

Some may say it applies only to threats to life itself, but that seems unlikely.

I feel fragile. What if I am? Imagine the regret if I guess incorrectly and end up shards of glass in a dented crate.

I want to be like Kirk Douglas and suffer quietly with my people in a line stretching back thousands of years, unbroken 'til the tragic buckling of the metallurgically suspect link that is me. I've always scoffed at Jews who opted out of the simple act of refusing to dine for a day. "Weaklings," I judged them. Certainly, I am.

But then, I think, at times like this, as when eating bread during Passover, that if one lives life as a candy bar with a nougetless center, where days of deprivation are the norm rather than the exception, what better way to set a day apart than by living it well?

Okay, you say, but doesn't that make me, not Christ but anti-Christ, not angel but devil?

"Spare me," I say, laughing heartily as I stroke my horns.

Living alone, I generally eat like an animal, directly out of bags and other packaging, often with my hands. But tonight, for my somewhat ceremonial meal before the Yom Kippur fast, I heated my chicken and ate it, well, um, not off a plate, but from a bowl.  With a fork.

And I used my wine glass for wine, probably for the first time, though I've had it for months.

There were still some animalistic elements, of course.

But, you know, you can chalk that up to habit and the limitations of my equipment.

I knew it was a bad idea to leave my newspaper so close to the sauna. And it seems it was my newspaper she brought in to read and to distract her so he could extend the length of her stay in the chamber.

The smell of it was making me sick. Or was it just that I knew what it could do? The dangerous formaldehyde released from that paper by the heat could easily create the tumor that will one day mean my end.

I tried to wait her out; to get some cleansing time, post-paper. But the journal gave her the power to stay.

Finally, I gave up. Riddled with mutagens, I moved on.

And to think I had supplied the bullet which killed me. Hoist on my own Evening Stand-ard.

It was nice the way she rubbed her thigh, though.

Into the sauna at the gym came a man whose seemingly erect endowment 'neath his swimsuit suggested nothing so much as a sheathed reserve nose. (You know, for nasal emergencies.)

He turned the quarter-hour(I'm guessing)glass in order to see how long he'd be inside. And I thought, why don't you just time your session with your cock?

I'm finding myself disturbed by Richard Herring's Twitter implication a few moments ago that the username @israel is worthless, presumably due to the debased worthlessness of the name Israel in general. It's one thing to question the policies of the nation (I do) but this -- again, via (strong) implication -- is a typical, reflexive British damning of the basic notion of Israel. Which particularly annoys me as Britain was largely responsible for creating the borders and nations now found in its (formerly) occupied territories. And within the lifetimes of people who still walk (or at least roll) the earth.

Oh, don't come crying "comedy" to me. Comedy doesn't invalidate legitimate reactions to the underlying ideas expressed via its obstructing and amplifying methods.

The irony is, Herring's joke -- about the 6-figure sum Israel reportedly paid to a guy named Israel for possession of the @israel name (he claimed the first five figures were probably 0) -- would be far less offensive as a standard "cheap Jew" joke. So, as I like Herring, I think I will choose to take it that way, allowing me to be more quaintly and individually offended.

And to forgive him this Saturday. Which, as you most surely know, is Yom Kippur.

Actually, much of my life revolves around buses.

And the other night, the bus, she came, but did not go..

It was late. Very late. As the crowd grew into a swarm. Threatening to sting.

But the bus, she did not go.

It moved to get into position. So, it seemingly worked.

But the bus, she did not go.

Hmm . . . 

Maybe the driver -- I'm damn sure I saw her smoking within -- realized the threat she posed to passengers and waited -- correctly -- for the fumes to dissipate, but -- not wanting to be caught (unaware that I had seen her) -- was forced to keep the windows shut, preventing ventilation and freezing her vehicle into a statue-still loop of self-protection.

Well . . . 

Suddenly, a cartoon vehicle, with "Mitie" written on the side, put-putted behind the smokehaven. A sweet, silly man exited, removed a mop from his puttmobile and headed a few short paces to the bus, which welcomingly sucked him in. He swooshed something out into the street, probably vomit. And soon, the carcinogenic transport vehicle was on its way.

Along, of course, with about 2 or 3 other buses that suddenly appeared just when they weren't really needed.

So, there was this seemingly Arabic music, or maybe prayer, playing at great length on the bus, providing an intriguing and often annoying backdrop for my ride through the city in the sun. I think it came from the driver's compartment as nobody else seemed to be carrying an audio device or wearing headphones (and it was too loud for leakage, anyway).

I didn't exactly hate it. In fact, it sounded a lot like Hebrew prayer and was quite a bit like listening to the tape my cantor made for me of my bar mitzvah portion. But I don't need to learn that at present and, in principle, the notion of a driver of a municipal bus subjecting people to his own choice of sonic backdrop, as if he were a New York cab driver, just hit me wrong.

I mean, it's not right.

Is it?

It's not.

Right?

Hey, guess what!  I got through my 2 no money days and can now live normally, almost. And since I didn't eat anything to speak of on Friday (3 Pringles?), I could, in theory, devote my 18 pence on Saturday to the ceaseless pursuit of fine dining . 

However, I needed a bottle of water for the gym (free pass!), so decided to ride out the day fueled only by The Last Egg. Then  -- part of a constant self-testing effort en route to the pinnacle of human perfection (and laughing at the torments of proximity to food) --  I headed in the afternoon toward the harvest festival on Southwark Bridge. 

Now, it's not why I went, but I did think maybe there'd be samples of things to enjoy. And, in fact, a bunch of people were carrying around fruit, seemingly with intent. But when I made eye contact with one of them, she seemed put off and confused. So, I had to make do with the children's amusements and the ambient, increasingly intense, food smells.

And you know, it was okay.

'Cause food smells nice.

But suddenly, there was a whole table length of samples -- pita and various Eastern toppings.  Then chicken.  And cider. And plump, red grapes.

And, uh, you know, I think maybe I'm getting fat.

2nd day of Rosh Hashonah was devoted to a reverential tour of my neighborhood, the once-Jewish East End. The wart-inflected laughter of a million pickles echoes even today through its, sadly, far less schmaltzy streets. I particularly wanted to hear the shofar blasts emanating from the shul in Stepney that operates still (they make bourbon, I think). Was worried I'd be late and I guess I was. By, maybe, a number of years.

Luckily, I knew of another shul, by Spitalfields Market.

Which was locked up good and tight.

I had to make do with a joyous parade of Muslims, enjoying their Fanta after a month of deprivation.

Close?  

Maybe.

But I wanted a cigar.

Lots of beautiful Jewesses at Rosh Hashonah services. And a full complement of variously-gendered Jew-types -- ArmsHeldTightlytoSidesofTorsoman, The Twitcher, Dark Israeli, Captain Orthodox Woman Who in the Secular World Would Be a Comic Book Geek . . .

Like being in a Yiddishe team comic. Jewish League of Britannia.

I am, however, neither hero nor villain.  So, what am I (continuing with this comic book metaphor, I mean)?

I guess I am a passerby.

The guy who looks.

Up.

In the sky.

I believe writers should write about what they know/about their own adventures, so here goes -- my life and times:

It doesn't smell good in here, never has. I think it's the mattresses they gave me.

There sure as hell were some hot American girls in the coffee place this morning. But they annoyed me with all their luggage.

Oh, yeah. The till guy was a shit when I bought that demi-baguette at Budgens Bow.

Hey, what's the deal with the surface of these walls?


Exciting, wot?

The personal is the universal.

Inevitably, in bike-controlled Boristown, someone rode a bicycle into my back. It wasn't terrible, it didn't hurt; was mostly, I guess, 'cause some teens couldn't reconcile the adolescent prerogative of  side by side cruising with the narrowness of the path along the Regent's Canal. Still, I was angry and, with the clean-cut East End youths now a few paces beyond me, I felt moved to blurt, before they were out of range, that I wished the offender had fallen into the river (sic).

Evolved American that I am, I'd forgotten that nice-looking kids in London are tough. So, as they kind of Hulked out and and turned threateningly toward me, I remained cautiously indignant even as I reconciled myself to the fact that I would soon be baptized. Still, I made a point of -- with pathos -- asking the primo dunker-to-be why he didn't ding his dinger or somehow alert me to his presence. At which point the -- still hostile -- diplomat of the group responded to the logic of my words by telling me to just shut up, to not say anything more.

Wise words from a male, East End Hillary Clinton. It took me 2 dangerous syllables to announce my assent, in a way that felt overly conciliatory. I regretted it immediately. I didn't want to look weak.

Unless that's what saved me from being hurled into the waterway. If that's the case, I did everything just right.

Got invited to a thing yesterday with some people I know.

So, when my shirt came out of the laundry with a stain burned in and I had to wear one that had been hanging on the line for weeks through rain and God knows what and when I realized -- as I've been showering at the gym -- that I didn't have any cleansing products and could only douse myself with warm wetness, I didn't honestly fear that my social comfort level would be diminished.

But then -- at the thing --  there were, um, not just people I know. And suddenly, I was possessed of that old, familiar feeling of conspicuous, inappropriate shabbiness. With only a whisper of warning, there was in my midst a heartless, gay clergyman and his courtesans, smoking and eating up the pastrami.  They were friends of the one person I already knew I didn't know and they only served to underscore how little I knew her and, somehow, eventually, I was sitting -- surrounded only by people I do know (plus one) -- hearing how the ideal group would include one or two other people and not me ("no offense") and I'm, like (in my mind),  I didn't ask to come to this thing, for God's sake, I was asked, practically implored.  

I mean, fuck, I've been in uncomfortable groupings like this before but it's usually been when I've forced myself into a scenario or was shoehorned in by a third party.

How do I get myself into situations like this? I need a manifesto and a hut. Fortunately, my phone already doesn't work.