I've gotten somewhat used to spending the weekends—from Thursday usually—over at Peej's place. I've been spending half the week at his place, basically, for the past two months. So I suppose I should be using this—my first Peej-free weekend since we met—to catch up with neglected friends, but the truth is, I don't much feel like doing anything, although there's plenty to do and be done, as always.

It's good sometimes to just sort of catch up with yourself, too. Not that I've been neglecting "the greatest love of all" lately. In fact, I decided if Peej was going to treat himself to a week of bead-bearded californication on his little nudie-judy hot springs holiday, I'd have my own little holiday right here at home! It's easy! All you need is a bolt of felt, a glue gun, some glitter, a pair of pom-poms, a jar of Fluffer Nutter, and—almost forgot!—a couple knitting needles!

And, boy, has it been a blast! Bubble baths every night. With candles all around, just like in a chick-flick! After which I paint my toenails—each one with a little face! Last night I did Brad and Angelina on my big toes, and then all their adopted kids on my other ones! Tonight it's Madonna and Guy and all of theirs!--All while watching an episode of The L Word on TV. When I decide to live it up, I pull out all the stops.

When my nails dry I practice my American Idol audition routine (I'm going sing "Once Bitten Twice Shy" and do that dance from the beginning of Derek Jarman's Sebastiane—that's where the felt, &c., comes in—for the penis puppets—it's going to blow anything Sanjaya ever did out of the water).

After that, it's standing in front of the mirror just crying and crying and screaming "Oh, the pain! No—no, leave me! Go on without me! I'll only hold you back!" whilst listening to Player's "Baby Come Back" (special thanks to Jason for straightening me out on that) over and over again, for, say, about an hour, depending on how fast the pills kick in.

I beat my chest vigorously for the next quarter of an hour.

And then I slink into my hairshirt, climb onto my bed of nails, and snuggle up with my copy of Emile Durkheim's Suicide, drifting off to slumberland where I am greeted by maggoty dreams—and—gosh darn it!—I keep forgetting to stick the knitting needles in my eyes! I have to put a sticky on the bedstand tonight.

Anyway, in the morning I wake up, my face bathed in dewy tears (it's great for the complexion), itching like crazy all over, but invigorated and ready for a new day alone! Woo-hoo!

So I didn't make any big plans for the weekend sort of intentionally. I wanted to be able to feel the full extent of my desolation, you know. Having friends around just dulls the pain. I wake up all grumpy the next day.

Plus there are some things to do around the old co-op. There's a big project underway—spackling and sanding and painting, and it has been interesting to see how our "intentional community," as Jay calls it, is handling it.

I won't get too into the nuts and bolts of it—lots of nuts, not always enough bolts—but every group has its dynamic, and our group is pretty dynamic to begin with. All I'll say is that it's had its moments of high drama—and some low—but we're working through it. And the place is looking like a million bucks! Or at least three-quarters of a million. Housing slump, you know.

So I had some housework this afternoon, but not much planned for the rest of the day. I wrote a little in the morning, but I felt like I was mostly spinning my wheels. So I decided I'd go get a crepe and some coffee at Mr. Crepe in Davis Square, and I took one of my favorite conversational philosophers, Thomas Nagel, along. I wanted to get his ideas on that eternal question: "What is it like to be a bat?"

Because I've been thinking a lot about that lately. "The subjective character of experience," as Nagel puts it. Particularly in a relationship. I mean, is there any objective reality in a relationship?

Mr. Crepe was packed, and the guy at the register looked like he was in some kind of slow-motion underwater ballet. You know, you've got to find the zone when you're working at a joint like that.

One thing they could use there is a counter where singles could sit, because I was alone, and what I knew was going to happen happened. Pretty soon they'll have a sign on the door saying "sorry, no singles on weekends!" Even though Mr. Crepe, by all accounts, is himself single.  I mean, there's no Mrs. Crepe anywhere mentioned in the literature.  Which means that Mr. Crepe might be delicious, but he's also a raging hypocrite and internalized singlephobe. 

Nonetheless, I didn't stress getting a table, knowing I would eventually—turnover was slow but so was the guy at the counter taking orders, and the prep time on the crepes. By the time I had finally ordered at the counter, there were two or three tables free. There were quite a few orders ahead of mine, so I knew I had a little wait. I sat down with my coffee at a table in the corner and opened my book.

Nagel's essay deals with the difficulty of a physicalist approach to the mind/body problem. The trick is to find a scientific description (and more than a schematic one) of personal consciousness and individual experience. "Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view."

The nature of experience argues for the likelihood of the "existence of facts... whose exact nature we cannot conceive... an understanding [of which] may be permanently denied to us by the limits of our nature."

"If there is conscious life elsewhere in the universe," Nagel goes on, "it is likely that some of it will not be describable even in the most general experiential terms available to us."
And finally—one last twist of the knife: "The problem is not confined to exotic cases, for it exists between one person and another."

Ouch.  Am I bleeding? Are those my guts on the floor? 

The place filled up again pretty quicklike, and suddenly the woman who runs the place, who's kind of a nervous nellie anyway, comes up to me, and she's like, "do you mind if some people sit with you at your table?"

Some people?

I was like, "Do I mind? Do I mind if total strangers who feel entitled to crash my table just because I'm sitting alone come sit down inches from me, and after some initial nervous laughter, try to ignore me trying to ignore them as they carry on self-consciously banal conversation tailored to prying ears, thinking all the time that there must be something wrong with me if I'm sitting alone in a crowded restaurant on a Saturday afternoon, mocking me with their intimate gestures and inside jokes, later telling all their friends about the pathetic, lonely freak they were forced to sit with at Mr. Crepe because he didn't have the decency to take his pitiful, depressing, sad-ass lonely self to some dank dark hole and have his crepe there? Erm, what was the question again?"

"Do you mind if some people sit with you?"

"Not at all," I said. "So long as I get to choose."

And I told her I wanted the gentleman in the bermuda shorts with the hairy legs and big calves. And he's got a kid—not thrilled about it—but that's two down. I need one more (there were four chairs). Let's see... the tall redhead who just walked in, but not the girl he's with.

But poor Nellie was freaking out. "It's just that people are waiting and they don't have a table!"

I whipped out my cell. "Well, I'm dialing 9-1-1 right now, honey! This is a real emergency! I mean, what did you think was going to happen when you opened this place with, like, eight tables and no counter? I'm sorry, but poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

"You know," I took her aside and confided, "the truth is I can't be sitting at random tables with random people, darling. In my business—walking around, being fabulous—you're judged by the company you keep. Supposing you put... that couple—" I pointed to an obviously infertile couple who had dropped in from the "Save the Planet!" rally on the square—"you know, anyone could walk by on the street and see me in here with them, and get... ideas. And you know how rumors start—then they go viral—pretty soon lives and careers are ruined. I just can't take that risk. Not for a crepe. You understand."

Just then my order was called, and I told her I'd have it to go, so she could have her old table. In the meantime she had found some other single sap willing to whore out his table, and told me, "no, no! You don't have to go!"

"Too late!" I cried so that the whole restaurant could hear. "Your singlism has lost you a customer!"

She looked stricken. And now everyone was watching. (That's what happens when you say "ism" Cambridgeside—it gets the same reaction "E.F. Hutton" used to in the financial district.)

I went on: "And the irony of it is: I'm not even single! Ha! It just so happens the guy I'm seeing is off at some nudist resort in California and hasn't called me in five days, but that doesn't make me single—HA!"

"I think you might be more single than you think," someone said.

"Is he that guy with beads in his beard?" someone else piped up.

"What of it?" I snapped.

"You know those aren't just beads, right?"

I glared at him.

"Those are ben wa balls, dude."

I was like, "Yeah, right. What are they doing in his beard then?"

"If you have to ask..."

Horrified and hyperventilating into my doggie bag, I fled the catty, mocking laughter at Mr. Crepe, my exit a little less grand than I would have liked due to my vexation at this latest revelation.

I came home, ran right upstairs, and locked myself in the attic, positioned myself in front of my full-length mirror, and watched myself stuff my face with crepe between convulsive sobs.

"No—no, go on without me!" I cried, choking on crepe, "I'll only hold you back!"

Later, after a soothing bubble bath, alone at my desk, peacock quill poised and ready for a profound thought, or piquant observation, I mulled over what Professor Nagel had said about how dreadfully, irrevocably, eternally alone we all are.

If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity—that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint—does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it.

All relation is hopeless, but that's OK, because life is impossible!

I remember—years ago now—reading Lucretius—one of the original "physicalists," on a beach in Nice, and determining about the time I read "the universe is not bounded in any direction" that existence is, in fact, impossible. I’ve got serious doubts any of this is happening.

What does Lucretius have to say about hooking up?

If you should find yourself passionately enamored of an individual, you should keep yourself well away from him. Thrust from you anything that might feed your passion. Lance the first wound with new incisions; to salve it, while it is still fresh, with promiscuous attachments; to guide the motions of your mind into some other channel.

Now, where did I put those knitting needles?