In a disastrous attempt to complete my Hallowe'en costume (I intended to go as Buffy), I dyed my hair blond.

It is now bright orange.

Would that it were possible to decapitate oneself.

I have a new crush. He is so cute I can hardly stand it.

The problem is that I can't blog about him effectively, because there's a small chance he might read my blog. I gave him the URL a few weeks ago and, though he has given me no indication that he's actually read it, he could be either a) reading it and not telling me about it or b) waiting to read it until he gets a chance to enjoy it, so I can't write anything that will uniquely identify him, or he might read it and know it's him, or this other person who happens to work with him in a professional capacity might read it and know it's him, though I don't know if that person is reading it either, but if he is then that would be an unacceptable invasion of my crush's privacy, and furthermore since I have no way to know whether my crush is actually reading it or not (because of course I can't do something as sensible as asking him), I would be constantly tortured by uncertainty about whether he'd read what I wrote about him or not and realized what a NEUROTIC FREAK I am.

Don't you wish you were me? Then you could be this healthy all the time.

He is so cute I can hardly stand it.

This morning I woke up to find a chewed up piece of gum stuck in my ass hair.

Last night I had a lovely date, but no stretch of the imagination allows me to understand how this could have happened, since neither one of us took any clothes off. And, for that matter, neither one of us chewed any gum.

My ass does not chew gum, either.

Forgive me for the grossness of this post, but I am afraid of what the universe might be trying to tell me.

After I broke up with N.T.--or, more properly, after N.T. broke up with me, that fucker, not that I'm bitter--I had a stunningly obvious realization.

Every book we've ever read and every movie we've ever seen has told us that love is something you feel for someone who is the perfect best friend, the perfect roommate, the perfect lover, the perfect intellectual companion, and the perfect conversationalist.

Clearly only a raving lunatic would expect to find all these in one person. So, just as clearly, this can't be what love is.

That was my realization about love. My question now is: so what the hell is it?

In an effort to bring clarity into my life, I renamed the hard drive of my computer. It used to be called Beelzebub, after the Father of Lies.

Now it is called Elizabeth Bennett, after the heroine of Pride and Prejudice.

Unfortunately, things are as murky as ever.

When I was six or seven, I joined the Cub Scout den run by the Jewish Community Center. I remember very little about my tenure as a Cub Scout--which, as I recall, lasted about two weeks--except that at one point we put on a play about the plight of Soviet Jewry. The play consisted of three pairs of vignettes: an American praying in synagogue, and a Russian praying in synagogue and getting carted off by the secret police; an American printing a Jewish newspaper, and a Russian printing a Jewish newspaper and getting carted off by the secret police; and an American teaching Hebrew, and a Russian teaching Hebrew and getting carted off by the secret police.

In every pair of vignettes, I played the Russian who got carted off by the secret police.

My college friend N.K. told me that he was a member of a progressive Boy Scout troop that performed a musical written by the Scouts' parents. N.K. played the part of a Capitalist and sang a song called "When I Need a Friend, I Buy One."

When N.K. first told me this I was wildly jealous, but then I realized that I had clearly gotten the better deal, since I was the one who was manhandled--not once but three times--by men in uniform.

On Monday, running insanely late for work, I got out of the shower and realized the worst thing had happened to me that could possibly happen to a gay man.

I was out of hair product.

It was either leave for work right then, however, or get fired, so I pretended I was in an action movie set somewhere in the jungles of Laos, where there were far more important things than hair product, like saving the lives of thousands of innocent civilians.

This pretense failed miserably, however, since deep in my heart I knew the truth: there is nothing more important than hair product.

Within two minutes of my getting to work, three people had complimented me on my hair and said I should wear it like that more often. Since I make all my decisions based on getting other people's praise, I have not worn hair product since then.

I feel so naked and vulnerable. What's to protect me from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune if I can't knock down a concrete wall with my hair?

Tonight my friend N.N. came over and installed the Tivo I bought last week.

I can't wait to become a Tivo zombie. Then I will never have to worry about anything ever again, or even leave my house.

Which sort of obviates the need for Tivo, but still.

I finally posted my Drip personal ad. (If you don't know the back story for this one, read the original post before continuing--this will be very confusing otherwise.)

I quote my ad here, verbatim, in its entirety.

sex: m
seeking: m
age: 29 (born Jan. 12, 1973)
occupation: spy
education: yes
interests: civil rights, chocolate, the undead
neighborhood: Mr. Rogers'
favorite vacation spot: the Land of Nod
favorite time of day: Actually, I prefer parsley, sage, and rosemary.
favorite drink at Drip: Oreo milkshake
musical preference:the soundtrack to Powertool 2.
biggest turn-on: revolution and wonder. Also when a cute guy licks my ears.
biggest turn-off: avarice of spirit, poor spelling
ideal weekend plans: go to Venice, spend a carefree weekend among the canals, and return to find my enemies gone to rack and ruin
typical weekend plans: play with my dog, wish I were important enough to have enemies
looks: matter/don't matter/shouldn't matter but they do Oh, Mary, please.
self-description: [Refer to "about me" section on the right-hand side of the blog. There are only so many amusing things I have to say about myself.] Also, I am [height suppressed], [weight suppressed], [hair color suppressed], and a bottom.
looking for:


So that's done, graven in photocopied and laminated paper, as it were.

With my luck, the guy I was after with this will find some unpardonable solecism in my Middle Egyptian and be totally turned off.

Either that or he will have fallen madly in love since placing his ad and moved with his partner to Saskatchewan.

One night when I was in Prague I mustered up the courage to go to a gay bar, something I am terrified to do in the United States, much less in Eastern Europe. But I was so plagued by my non-functioning gaydar that I felt I needed to go to a place the sexuality of whose denizens was not in question.

I selected the most innocuous-sounding establishment I could find, which was a video bar called "Friends." As it was early in the evening, there was only a handful of people there, some of them quite attractive. I realized with delight that two of the most attractive guys in the place were openly staring at me, eyes brimming with admiration and excitement. The possibilities were countless: which one of them was interested in me? Or were they both interested in me and preparing to fight over me? Or was a threesome worthy of a Bel Ami video in the offing? Clearly I had made the right decision in coming here. My existential loneliness would be quieted for the evening, my doubts about my suitability as a human being assuaged, and I would find brief but joyous companionship in an affirmation of the universal brotherhood of man.

Then I realized that they were staring at Madonna singing "Holiday" on the TV screen above my head.

I gulped down a hot chocolate and fled.

There is somebody whose blog I like. He also likes my blog. We e-mailed back and forth a couple times, and I eventually decided I wanted to ask him out on a date.

However, I was plagued by the pressure that the blind-dateness of it would create if he accepted. What if we met and he picked his nose? What if I picked my nose? What if it was just the worst evening anybody had ever spent in living memory?

I spent days pondering this dilemma before deciding to try to meet him but not actually on a date--just on a friends hanging-out kind of thing. That way nobody would feel any pressure and then if there was chemistry I could ask him out on an actual date.

The problem was that I had worked myself up into such a state over the whole thing that the e-mail I sent was the most graceless, insulting invitation anyone has ever tendered in the history of the world. Unsurprisingly, I have not heard from him since.

So then I spent days pondering this dilemma. I had to do something, because every time I thought of what he must think of me after my incredible rudeness, I started to twitch involuntarily in strange places. But I couldn't e-mail him, because if he wants nothing to do with me ever again (totally understandable under the circumstances), that would be intruding on him in an unwelcome and impolite way.

So I decided to blog about it.

If he is reading this, he doesn't have to e-mail me or anything. He should just know that I'm not the boorish, arrogant prick my e-mail made me seem.

A total NEUROTIC FREAK, yes.

But not a boorish, arrogant prick.

I'm sorry.

Of course, there is also the possibility that he was so offended he stopped reading my blog and will never read this, in which case I am totally fucked.

And not in a good way.

I think my hairline is receding.

Excuse me while I leap out of my window.

Too bad it's only on the second floor.

I was dismayed to find that American gaydar doesn't work in Europe. At least mine doesn't. About every third man I passed (starting with the very cute hotel clerk who checked us in) set off my gaydar, which makes no statistical sense. I realized I had no idea if these men were gay or just Czech.

I think that, for the benefit of Americans on the prowl, gay Europeans should have to do something to identify themselves. Like wear armbands with pink triangles on them or something.

Oh, wait.

Crap.

I got back from Prague yesterday.

Terezin, the concentration camp I was there to research, is now a town, population 1,200 and growing. According to our tour guide, the people who live there know little and care less about what the place used to be.

There are two hotels there. One is a two minute walk from the crematorium. The other is in the old SS barracks. I spent about five minutes in the latter and it was the most terrifying place I've ever been in my life.

Tomorrow I'll be amusing, I promise. Today I just don't quite have it in me.

You will no doubt be delighted to learn that Faustus is coming home today. I am sure he will have many exciting tales of Prague, or wherever he went. Whatever he chooses to reveal, he will want his blog back.

I am not certain I am ready to surrender it. Blog whore that he is, he has managed to build up a readership by means I am too lazy to duplicate. Now, his audience is mine, mine, mine!

Goblin: Gee, Daddy, what do you want to do tonight, then?

Me: The same thing we do every night, Goblin! Try to take over the world!!!!!

BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Ahem.

I need to go take Goblin for a walk now. You all must promise to visit us at http://upsidedownhippo.blogspot.com.

Before he left on his trip, Faustus mentioned that he was having his bedroom painted. Actually, he is having his entire apartment redone. I have decided to surprise him by sneaking in and redesigning it myself, and I know just the model upon which to base it. I have recently become enamored of "Trading Spaces" (I know, I know . . . I am always slightly behind the trend curve, but I just got cable), and this past week, they revealed the most astonishingly grotesque room ever conceived: yellow walls, pink carpet, a garden swing with gravel underneath, a sickly looking dollhouse, and many other atrocities, the most malevolent of which was a bed covered with Astroturf with garlands of flowers wired on. The designer, Kia, was so proud of what she had unleashed upon the world that I have decided to recreate it as faithfully as possible for my dear friend. It actually could not be much worse than what the previous owners had done with the place, and there is always the welcome possibility that Faustus will utilize the garden swing for purposes completely unimagined by its creator.

I will let my dog take over the writing as I start making up my "to do" list.

Goblin Foo Uvula speaks:

Yay yay yay!

Daddy said I could write again. He's happy I remembered how to shake hands after a year of not doing it. It's not that hard. I'm smart smart smart!

*lick lick lick lick*

Daddy said I could do something new with my writing and I've decided to do a horoscope for dogs. Dogs dogs dogs! If you're not a dog you can read it but it might not come true. Daddy said it might not come true anyway. Daddy doesn't have a lot of faith in my abilities. I'm a dog and I'm a Leo so I will only do Leo for now.

*snork*

Goblin's "Hound-o-Scope" for Leo
Expect a lot of pooping today (poop poop poop!) and a craving for carrots. Watch out that you don't pee on your own feet in your haste to come in out of the rain. Strange smells seem enticing but should be avoided at all costs. A tall stranger who wants to smell your genitals may come on too strong but don't let him get you agitated.

I never linked to this blog from my own because Faustus's entries tend to be a tad bit more, shall we say, risqué than mine, and my mother reads my blog. I know, I know . . . what kind of nutjob starts a journal of his activities and lets his mother read it? This is the sort of thing I will have to bring up in therapy, but for now, suffice it to say that I do not want have to explain to my mother why, among other things, my very dear friend got in trouble with his not-boyfriend for having someone else's bite marks on his ass.

So it occurs to me that I can use some of my time in this space to talk about things that I would not like my mother to know.

Today, for example, as I went into the locker room after working out at the gym, a man in there gave me a funny look. He, himself, was almost dressed, and I still had to strip out of my workout clothes, go into the steam room for a few minutes, and then take a shower (the first step of which he watched with avid eyes). When I returned to my locker ten minutes later, he was still there. I have no idea how he contrived to delay his progress for that long, but I pretended not to see him or the notice he was paying me. When I was ready, I grabbed my things and breezed out of the room, up the stairs, and into the lobby with him on my heels. Only when I greeted my waiting female friend with a great hug did he veer off . . . although not without one last, lingering look.

I will not pretend that all of this did not thrill me to no end. I have a boyfriend, and the gentleman in question was so not my type, but my shaky confidence in my physical appearance was certainly augmented a notch or two by having someone select me out of a room full of handsome gym gods and go through such obvious lengths in pursuit.

I think I will keep going to that gym because I am obviously doing something right.

Anyway, enough about me. Maybe I will hand the forum over to Goblin again next time. She knows some card tricks.

Yes, that was my dog who blogged yesterday. I, Faustus's guest blogger, was in Baltimore putting together Ikea furniture for my best friend, who required a homosexual's decorating touch. Faustus may be darting from Jewish ghetto to concentration camp in Eastern Europe, but I now have enough hex tools to festoon a chandelier. Who has the better deal?

I am not sure I should let Goblin stand in for me again. She might get on her high horse, and a Boston terrier on a high horse, while a sight to behold, is a terrible thing indeed.

Does anyone need any advice? We are good at that.

The world according to Goblin Foo Uvula.

Me me me! It's me!

*lick lick lick lick lick lick*

Uncle Faustus is taking a break from his search for love in Manhattan and said I could write in his blog. Me me me! He said I'm searching for love in Manhattan too. But I kinda found it because his dog A. is my lesbian lover. She's bi.

*snork*

Uncle Faustus never mentions A. but he knit her a sweater in the shape of a dinosaur. My daddy never knits me sweaters. Daddy sometimes takes me to the park but not today because he hurt his foot. Daddy says that Uncle Faustus is a bossy bottom even though he only knows because Uncle Faustus told him and not from real life. Daddy sleeps with Uncle Bobby. Sometimes he makes me go in my crate and all kinds of noise happens outside and I don't know what's going on.

What's a bossy bottom?

A. says she knows but she won't tell me so I don't think she really knows. A. doesn't have a crate but she has a bag.

*yawn snork growl*

I know all kinds of secrets people don't think I know but I know them. I have my own blog with my daddy but he almost never lets me write even though he named it after me. I'm the only Boston terrier with an advice column but I'd trade it all for a sweater shaped like a dinosaur.

*whine*

With the help of the contractor, I have chosen paint colors for my room.

When I get back from Prague, one of my walls will be blue seafoam. The other three walls will be--I'm not making this up--icy moon drops.

I think icy moon drops must be the gayest color ever.

And on that note, goodbye for a few days. You'll be in good hands with these two guest blogging.

By this time tomorrow I will be on a flight to the Czech Republic. I am being sent there to do research by a producer who has commissioned me to write the score for a musical about Terezin, the concentration camp just outside of Prague.

People keep telling me to have a great time.

I will be spending a day in the Jewish ghetto, a day interviewing Holocaust survivors, and two days at a concentration camp. I'm not sure what it will be like, but somehow "a great time" seems unlikely to be an apt description.

In my absence, so that my loyal if small fan base might not feel abandoned, this man and his dog will be guest blogging for me. None of us is quite sure yet how this will work, but we hope you will enjoy it. If you don't, blame the Nazis. If it weren't for them I wouldn't be going to begin with.

I just hope I'll be allowed to take my knitting needles on the plane.

Because otherwise it's going to be a hell of a long ride.

My immediate supervisor at my day job has been out of town this past week, so her duties were distributed among the support staff in her absence. A co-worker and I got the job of assigning tasks as they came in (it's a little more complicated than this but it would be so mind-numbingly dull to describe that reading it would probably cause you to become narcoleptic).

Ordinarily I don't care about my day job at all. I waltz in late, leave early, do just enough work to appear competent, and spend as much time as possible eating and gossiping with the other support staffers.

The taste of power changed everything.

I became angry when I thought co-workers weren't working hard enough. I stayed two hours late yesterday to make sure everything got done. Someone called in sick today and I was certain she was lying.

Thank God my supervisor gets back tomorrow, because I am beginning to love this way too much.

I have volunteered to write the songs for a kids' show being put on by a group that uses theater to teach life skills to kids from Hell's Kitchen. The kids write plays with songs in them that they then perform along with adult actors and directors. But the songs need music, which is where I come in.

The problem here is that these are street kids and they have written songs that are clearly intended to be R&B ballads and hip hop dance numbers.

I am about as capable of writing a hip hop dance number as I am of laying an egg.

Maybe I can convince them that some nice Viennese waltzes would be more dramatically appropriate.

Yesterday, in a sharp departure from my policy of waiting for him to get in touch with me, I e-mailed W.F. and asked him if he wanted to get together some time.

This turned out to be a mistake.

I got an e-mail back from him today saying he'd love to get together but not on a date, because he didn't want to be dating anybody right now.

I hate him.

Even if he is a fat sexual compulsive who has any number of good reasons not to want to be dating anybody right now.

Or ever.

Tonight I had an altogether new experience, which I am going to call an undate.

Several weeks ago I got a response to my planet out ad from a guy named N.N. who was about to move to New York. His e-mail and profile were charming, but the picture in his profile was so unattractive that I knew I could never love him. So I e-mailed him and told him that, since posting the ad, I had acquired a boyfriend (neither completely true nor completely false), but that I'd still love to meet him if he was interested in making friends in the city.

So he moved here a couple weeks ago and we arranged to meet tonight. I was surprised to see that he was nowhere near as unattractive as his picture made him seem. I mean, he's no Peter Bacanovic, but I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. (Of course, the way I have been leading my life lately, it's difficult to imagine somebody I would kick out of bed for eating crackers, but that's neither here nor there.)

In any case, things were fine for a while, until he asked about my boyfriend. The problem, of course, was that when I first wrote him, I had two reasonable facsimiles of a boyfriend, and now I have none.

So I lied.

I am a terrible liar.

The more I said, the less sense I made and the less believable I was, and so the more I felt I had to say to try to make more sense and be more believable, and so the less--well, you get the picture. In the end I wove such a Byzantine tissue of lies, truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, and pi-truths that I clearly sounded like a creature from another planet.

So it doesn't matter if I decide he's attractive enough for me to love, because he thinks I am an ALIEN FROM OUTER SPACE.

How do I get myself into these situations?

I got a reply to my planet out profile from someone with the user name "serious top." The subject line was "your the one." I quote his message in full (N.B.: to appreciate his response, you must know that in my profile I refer to both skydiving and chocolate chip cookies):

"our first date will be skydiving, chocolate chip cookies, fucking and a
lot of conversation to find out about each other. However, right not I
can say I love you."

Right not I can say I love you?

The ambiguity here is almost too much to bear. I might have to respond, if only to find out what this could possibly mean.

In which case maybe we can just do the skydiving, cookies, and fucking and skip the conversation to find out about each other.

Come to think of it, that's not a bad general rule for dating.

I am turning thirty in less than four months.

All my friends who are over thirty tell me that the thirties are (or were, as the case may be) much better than the twenties.

I am full of hope that this is true. I mean, they could hardly be worse, could they?

Could they?

I know it's wrong. I know it's a clear indication of a deep and insidious character flaw. Reason and duty cry out against it.

But I am in love with Peter Bacanovic and I want to bear his children.

Please forgive me if you can.

My friends B.N., D.R., and I are inventing a game.

It's called Off the List; or, Judging Harshly in Secret.

We're still working on the specifics, but here are some general principles:

Each player will be dealt a hand of cards that will say things like "Can you believe what he's wearing?" and "Don't say anything, but I slept with her boyfriend." At each turn, a player will select one card from his or her hand to compare with one card from another player's hand. If the players have matching cards (two "That haircut is a Hallowe'en costume, right?" cards, for example), then they can take points away from a third player without that player's knowing it. So you have no idea how many points you actually have and how many have been maliciously taken away from you until the end of the game.

There will also be cards that players will be forced to select at various points throughout the game that will say things like "Your second-best friend overhears the nasty story you tell about her to your best friend. Lose 50 points," and "You manage to swallow the note you wrote about your boss's personal hygiene just before she enters the room. Get 100 points."

None of this will distract me, of course, from the other game I'm working on, which is a Golden Girls version of Clue.

I am wildly excited.

I have found a web site through which one can buy titles of nobility.

For less than the price of a cup of coffee a day for a year, I am going to become a viscount.

It's unclear to me whether this title is hereditary, but since the odds against my having any children are quite high, I'm not going to worry about it.

Once I have my title, I will force all my friends and sexual partners to address me as "My Lord."

Oh, wait, I already do.

For those of you who were frustrated in your attempts to view the pictures of the sock I posted on September 26, please try again. Something strange was happening with the hosting site; I think I may have fixed it.

In other news, this may be the funniest thing I have ever seen.