by: Mark Thomas [[email protected]]
date: 10/14/95 00:57 PM



after playing pinball tonight i went to Tommy Makem's on East 57th, where I 
summarily requested a fish and chips dinner with iced tea. then the Makem 
Brothers started singing, all that oppressively happy and cheerful Irish 
stuff that stops just short of yodeling. 

it reminded me of a time i was at a bar called Avalon on 2nd avenue and the 
bartender was irish, and he and i were just talking about this and that and
i told him i was planning a trip to san francisco that weekend to see some 
friends, and he mumbled about having been there and he would say like 

	"well, me and mramramramra used to drive route 1 and me 
	 and mramramra used to blahblablah," 

and i couldn't figure out what hell he was saying so i listened very 
closely and realized he was saying "me and my guy used to drive..." 
and he was pretty obviously muffeling his voice a little whenever he 
would reveal this business of his "guy," and it just was so preposterous 
to me that anyone would bother concealing something like that, but 
then i realize that sexual identity is all a lot of people have to go 
on in this world, not only in terms of themselves but in terms of how 
they evaluate and consider the people around them. and then i remembered 
being embarrassed to tell people that i called bbses and played the 
piano (not at the same time) because it seemed like they thought these 
were deviant pursuits, and christ maybe they are, or maybe they were, but 
who cares if it's what you are and if it's what you do. 

having said that, i know that a lot of people i meet (not to mention the 
lot of people from irc and from bbses who i've never met and probably 
never will) talk about interpersonal relationships in such a way that 
you'd think sex was the only way two people had to communicate. i know 
that i've been with people for whom this is true, and i seem to meet a 
lot of people on the internet specifically who can't handle the idea 
that i would chat with a woman or so much as talk to a woman on the phone 
without automatically lurching into obscene sexual innuendo and suggestive 
chatter, always but always followed up by a few rounds of cheap and 
satisfying sex, because sex is the only goddam thing that two people can 
share, when there is nothing more to talk about, or if there was never 
anything to talk about, the only thing left is to have sex, and since 
few people seem to have anything they want to talk about i guess that 
leaves us all with nothing to do but have sex. 

it's not what i want, i mean i can't even begin to explain or detail how 
hard it has been to make and keep friends in this world, and for all 
these means of communication put at our disposal, it's astounding but 
sobering to discover how difficult it is to reach any level of meaningful 
contact with someone on-line, particularly when there is always this 
assumption of sexual interest and sexual repression among those of us 
who really like to stay home nights and play board games and trace the 
movement of books through the new york public library as their movements 
from return-bin to shelf to checkout counter are meaninglessly recorded 
and made available on the internet. (meaningless, because i know 5 
people who have gone to a specific library branch to find a book that 
the internet-accessible card catalogue said was "ON THE SHELF" only to 
find that the book was not on any shelf.)