BDSM friend's visit (3 of 3): "Tenure Rots Your Brain."

My one friend who's into BDSM really, really dislikes most tenured professors.

"Tenure rots your brain," he was like.

He was appalled by how my classes got cut at the art school, and also my observation that the academics who give me advice talk of how I have a long-term career (e.g. "when your book gets published...") or say things that assume as much, w/no recognition that b/c of my lack of financial stability, my finding an academic job and reaching those points are not a given...

He's said that he thinks tenure should be abolished b/c it makes too many people lazy and petty and get their heads up their asses, but I've never really pressed him on what system should replace it.

Interestingly, he's shooting for a tenure-track job after his current multiyear research gig ends, though it's at a state school "gateway" institution that doesn't seem to have as many full-of-themselves tenured professor problems.

BDSM friend's visit (2 of 3): Bar Encounter.

That night, we went barhopping.

At the townie bar - the 3rd of the 3 bars we hit up - I ended talking with this (fat) (mid-20s) (white) girl.

She was telling me how she took care of her alcoholic mother, who would sometimes be so drunk that she'd just stand in the kitchen and piss, and come close to burning herself on the radiator, if her dog didn't try to keep her away from it.

"So I hate my mom for being an alcoholic, and my dog for putting himself at risk to help my mom!", she was like.

My friend was in the bathroom while this was happening, and I summarized the conversation for him when he got back.

"But what would her mom burn on the radiator anyhow?", I was like.  "Her clitoris?  Her labia?".

Then, I was like, "I really don't know female anatomy too well."

BDSM friend's visit (1 of 3): Secret.

So, a few weeks ago my one friend who's into BDSM was back in town visiting people.

It turns out he had never really hung out in the neighborhood that I currently live in!

I met him in the park just south of the subway station, and it was there that he told me that.

Then, he was like, "Did you know there's a dungeon right there?', meaning by the subway station.

Then, he added, "I had some hot times with [first name of his old girlfriend] there."

I asked him exactly where, since over by the subway station it's just a few decrepit apartment blocks and Chinese massage places and a gas station, but he avoided the question.

A beach exclamation...

...by a(n older) (black) woman sitting out on a blanket with her friend, and grooving to some stuff she has on a small radio:

"Sing, Earth Wind, sing!".

Differential Interest in Books.

It's so interesting how a mood can strike you, to put down one book and start reading another book again.

I was devouring a Balzac novel, and though I only have a fifth left, I suddenly just wasn't in the mood to read it.

Instead, I picked up the Clive Davis memoir that I had checked out from the library and begun this winter, and all I felt like doing was reading it, and I read it in the morning, and then five hours at the beach, and then again in the evening, and on other evenings since.

It's like I suddenly can't get enough of it!

I'm def. the type of person who has like 3-4 books going at one time, and I hop between them randomly.

How Weirdness Sets In...

The other week after seeing a classic documentary downtown about 2 eccentrics, I was talking with the (young) (white) (male) (movie buff) ticket taker I'm friends with.

We started talking about eccentricities and how they slowly creep up around you when you live by yourself, and I mentioned that during the middle of my dad's recent visit, I noticed how odd it might look, that I had all these produce bags spread out over a shelf above my sink on top of the noodles spices etc. I keep stored there.

I put them up there to dry and then re-use them, and sometimes I forget to put them away, and they don't even register to me that they're there, though I bet they look odd to other people.

He then told me that before his old girlfriend moved in, he spot-checked his apartment for shit he does that might look weird to someone else, and reversed like everything.

Except, he forgot to close his cabinet doors (he leaves them open all the time, for efficiency).

Shocking Confessions about the Black Neighborhood Bar.

So the other week I got spontaneously invited to a barbecue, where I met a (white) (male) (townie) neighborhood bartender / former bouncer who used to have a garden apartment that fronted the lot by the back entrance of the (black) neighborhood bar.

He said people used to shoot up and do crack out there all the time, and people would sneak around this one L-shaped alley behind the dumpster for blowjobs.

Also, he had to move his air conditioner off his back window so people wouldn't piss on it, and one time he found a big dump right outside his back window.

"No way," I was like.  "When was this?".

"Years ago," he was like, "Like maybe 2012."