Man, it is cold in my apartment this afternoon. I just got back a little while ago; I was working out of the city all day, and it was chilly in the office too! In fact, it was warmer in the lobby of the office building than in the area where I work. It's very discombobulating when everywhere you go is cold. You start to think the late Rod "Twilight Zone" Serling is going to show up and "submit for our consideration the day the world stayed cold." In fact, a friend of mine said years ago that the weather hasn't been the same since Rod Serling died!

Well, there's nothing supernatural about it. Oil is more expensive, so I guess we get less heat this winter. You start to think about how the quality of life, something we've taken for granted, can easily be threatened when things like oil get more costly.

When I was a kid, we lived in a fairly small apartment--I shared a bedroom with my two younger sisters until I was twelve--and on those Chicago winter mornings, it was sometimes so freezing when I got out of bed! So I've always liked plenty of heat since.

It wasn't too hard to share a bedroom with two girls until I was almost an adolescent, because it was just what I was used to. But when I finally got a room of my own at age twelve, I began to realize how nice it was to have privacy. Just in time to study Playboy magazines in earnest...although I still read Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Castle of Frankenstein, two seminal horror fan publications.

My sisters, though, had to keep sharing a bedroom--which also doubled for a time as the family tv room!!--so they never got privacy until they grew up and left home. I don't think that was so great for them, but we didn't have a luxurious lifestyle. I think my parents got me my own room because they realized it was a necessity as I hit puberty and would need quality time alone to zealously contemplate the eternal verities...

I talked to my sister Brenda briefly yesterday. She's the one who visited New Jersey last weekend--if you're curious, see my posts "My sister, religion, and me" "Old emotions overwhelm Sir Cranky" and "Cranky stuffs his face" for the rest of this family tale. She and her husband Bill had a really good time hanging out with my uncle, aunt, and cousins. I'm still sorry Brenda didn't get into New York so I could have shown them around, but she was happy the way things worked out.

It made me think how giving somebody the opportunity to be a host is a kind of gift, and I felt she denied me that. But she just had to do it this way, I guess, because she hadn't seen my uncle and company in many years. It's not that I don't get along with Brenda, because I do, and we talk fairly frequently on the phone when she's back home in the Southwest.

I guess I'm feeling embarrassed and defensive that she didn't come to see me, as if there's something wrong with me. Anyway, I went to see her at the family brunch, and it was okay.

Growing up in the same small room with two sisters had its downside occasionally. I don't remember exactly how, but they found out I had a crush on a girl in my seventh grade class--I jotted something about it in one of my school notebooks and they read it--and I got endless teasing. From then on, I did not jot about my passions so indiscreetly.

I guess my parents finally realized when I was about to enter puberty that I needed some privacy, so we finally got a larger apartment when I was seventh grade. Maybe the fact that my sisters were ribbing me so mercilessly was the spur for us to move?

Generally, though, I got along well with my sisters. They always looked up to me, which was nice. I'd give them chess lessons, which they loved even though I wasn't a very good player myself. I'd also take them to the movies on Saturday afternoons sometimes, until I became a teenager and then I mostly went with my friends.

My sisters and I shared a feeling of comradeship that was a buffer against the spectacle of dissension that was our parents. Mom and Dad had some bad arguments in front of us, and I think we kids bonded to give each other a sense of stability. To this day, I really hate see people fighting, either verbally or physically. It sets off a real feeling of chaos in me.

A woman I know was recently talking to me about a mutual acquaintance of ours, and criticizing him. The criticisms had merit, but when asked for my opinion, I answered with the kind of understatement that is supposed to signify agreement without adding a potshot of my own. I was accused of being wishy-washy for this, but I don't much like to trash people in conversation. I do plenty of that in my mind in private--I can get as angry as the next person--but around other folks, I prefer to use whatever dry wit I can muster so that I cannot be accused of slamming somebody later on down the line when I myself am being gossiped about. Let the nogoodniks of this world hoist themselves on their petards--they don't need my help, in most cases.

I also admire people who can communicate their feelings skillfully yet indirectly through attitude and tone, rather than blunt pronouncements. This makes me think of Alexander Pope's little poem (the only one I know), which was supposedly the inscription on the tag of a royal dog:

"I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?"

Well, maybe that's a little more nasty than what I'm talking about here, but you get the idea. I appreciate wit.

How did I get onto THIS topic after starting with the cold weather? Anyway, it's been a long day--I got up at 6:20 a.m.--and it's dinnertime, so I'll close for now. Have a good dinner yourself!

My favorite dancer Lily had told me that one of the days she was working was tonight, Monday. Although I’d told her I would be coming by later in the week, I decided to pay her a short visit tonight too. But as I watched the night shift lineup on stage it quickly became apparent she wasn’t there after all. When I asked about it, management said she wasn’t even on the list to work.

Perhaps she had to change her schedule. I was pretty disappointed, and my reluctance to spend money on anybody else made me rather unsociable. I wasn’t rude but I wasn’t too talkative. A few girls asked me for dances and tried to chat me up, but I wasn’t in the mood to spend money on anybody but Lily.

If I wasn’t so money-conscious right now, because of the high self-employment taxes I have to pay in a few weeks, I would have perhaps been more relaxed and gotten a dance or two from the other dancers. But I didn’t want to spend money I would rather spend on Lily later in the week, so I quickly finished my beer and left.

At least I got work done today, doing some email correspondence, and I also made good progress on my tax preparation. I have to total all my receipts and bring the figures to my accountant to prepare the forms, and as a freelance worker that means I have to go through my expense diary and add up lots of numbers.

I didn’t finish the job, but I organized most of the figures so it’s just a matter of addition now. I’ll be able to go to the accountant in a couple of weeks and find out precisely how much I’ll owe.

I think the idea I had was to be diligent and work on this tedious task, and then if I was a good boy and got it done, to reward myself with an extra visit to Lily. I’m like a parent combined with a toddler in one body; the Parental Cranky has to tempt the Toddler Cranky with a treat to get his chores done.

Now I wonder if Lily’s going to be working the other days that she told me. She’d said me she had some personal stuff to attend to this week, so maybe it’s caused her to completely change her work schedule.

Ah, this type of “friendship” is stilted and unnatural. It lacks the flow of real interaction with somebody I like. Maybe I should give her an email address where she can write me next time if she changes her hours. It would save me the time going to the club, and the money I waste on admission, beer, and coat check when I don’t have any reason to be there.

The pleasant hours I’ve spent with Lily have felt so authentic to me that all the other girls feel phony to me now. Well, “phony” is too harsh a word; it would be more accurate to say that they just seem like gals acting nice to me in a somewhat robotic fashion in order to earn twenty dollars a dance. Maybe my preference for Lily is clouding my judgment. Hell, maybe Lily is playing me too and she’s just a better actress than the rest of them. Still, her liking for me has felt real enough in a casual way. I guess it just strikes me as weird how lately I can be in a roomful of almost-naked women, and only have eyes for one of them! In a way, maybe the clubs have become just a backdrop for my “friendships” with a certain kind of woman--the kind who is exhibitionistic whether for money, for pleasure, or for both.

What also occurred to me tonight as I sat in the club looking at the other dancers is how I’m always judging them on a visual basis, when the fact is that if I were in bed with most of them, they would be perfectly attractive and desirable without necessarily coming up to my absurdly high standards of charisma and allure. It’s strange how I have this split between my intellectual, aesthetic assessment of women, and my instinctual reaction to them as a human male animal.

Because if any of the girls I turned down tonight had lapdanced for me, I’m sure the experience would have been nice enough.

What a fissure there is between my mind and my body...

Another very cold day, though sunny. I feel tired from my extra-emotional weekend too. And when you work for yourself, at home mostly, it's hard to get in the productive groove when you feel this way. It's like pushing the proverbial rock up a hill...

Call me Sir Sisyphus.

Today is a perfect day to work on my tax preparation, so after I finish writing here, I'm going to do that. I hope...

I woke up thinking about Lily, my favorite stripper. She is working tonight. I wonder if I should stop in for a drink and a dance...okay, maybe two dances...that would still be comparatively cheap. I told her I was coming by again on Friday, so maybe she has another regular customer stopping by today? I never asked, but I wonder if she has other regulars and she staggers their visits on different days.

I was feeling too lovey-dovey towards her the other night, I think that was another reason I wanted to leave sooner (besides the fact that it would save me money). I don't really want to feel too tenderly towards her if she isn't interested in being friends on the outside in some way, whether it's having a meal or enjoying a sexual fling. I would rather just keep it light, erotic, and fun if my status is Purely Customer.

I wonder if I'm fooling myself that this is possible. Can I really compartmentalize like this about her, at this point?

Anyway, it makes me realize another function of the dominant-submissive fantasies I have shared with Lily as she lapdances for me. They actually keep me a little at an emotional distance from her. The other night, when I had more conventional sexual feelings towards her, feeling so turned on and wanting to kiss and caress and fuck her, I felt closer to her but also more frustrated because I knew it wasn't going to happen. But when we verbally fantasize about her being my dominatrix, I feel less vulnerable and consequently more excited.

This relates to the phenomenon in psychology, which is at the core of so-called perverse behavior, where you turn a liability into an asset. Role-playing that a woman is an unattainable dominatrix is a way of turning the fact of her real unattainability into an erotic plus.

So as I thought about Lily this morning, I felt that I wanted her to tease me tonight in that playfully haughty way she can assume--which does not turn me off because I know she is not really that way and this is just a game.

I was thinking yesterday when I was visiting my family that my wealthy male cousin's wife is very attractive, but also very bossy. For me, her bossiness cancels out her allure.

Or maybe what I see as her "bossiness" is just assertiveness, and it intimidates me.

Yes, I am a male chauvinist. Ladies, let me be king, even if you're pretending I'm your slave! I know it's ridiculous.

Anyway, I frequently retreat into my sexual fantasyworld when emotional stress becomes too great. When I got off the train last night, back in Manhattan again, I stopped in the newsstands in Penn Station for about a half hour and perused various girlie magazines. The beauty of women has always been my narcotic of choice. And no matter what anybody says about it's being passe, Playboy has some of the most incredible erotic photography of women today, especially in the foreign editions.

I believe I have always been Sir Cranky, Stripper Fan, Lover of Steamy Nightlife, partly because it helps me from feeling overwhelmed by my ambivalent emotions about family life and the quicksand it has always felt like. I am not a Family Man...I am a Stripper Fan. And I wonder if my late father didn't get a job fifty-odd years ago in that Chicago stripclub hat check concession as a way to put some distance between himself and my mother...remember, she told him to quit the gig, that his choice was the job, or her! So he quit.

My mother, of course, is a veritable icon of Female Bossiness, except that what worked when she had everybody under her control during my childhood does not work (except to induce guilt) now that my sisters and I are adults. So she is strangely ineffectual...yet still strident. It fills me with an almost unmanageable sadness.

Anyway, back on Planet Manhattan in the busy crowds of Sunday night Penn Station, my orbs popped at the image of a gorgeous Japanese girl in the French edition of Playboy...and at the brand-new pictorial of Anna Benson in FHM. She's the vivacious and outspoken wife of pitcher Kris Benson, who was recently traded from the New York Mets to the Baltimore Orioles. She loves to talk about her sexlife with her hubby, and got quite a bit of ink in the New York press. I'll be curious to see if and when she makes a visit to check out Baltimore's famous Block, home to a score of stripclubs, and what kind of tabloid stories she'll stir up...I could see Miss Anna making as much of an impression in Baltimore as famed ecdysiast Blaze Starr once did in her 50s and 60s heyday! Sir Cranky will stay tuned...

What I wrote yesterday was really helpful to me. Once I clearly understood the old psychological dynamic that had gotten me angry, the anger essentially vanished. It was actually quite amazing. For the rest of yesterday, peace reigned in my mind. I ate a tasty Chinese take-out dinner and watched one of my favorite femmes fatale, Chelo Alonso, in the new Alpha Video DVD of "Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops." Then I took a shower and went to sleep. I went out to the family brunch today in New Jersey feeling a bit sleepy (I had to catch an early train) but without rancor. (For backstory on this, refer to "My sister, religion, and me" and "Old feelings overwhelm Sir Cranky.")

It was pleasant to see my sister Brenda and her husband Bill. I talk to her frequently on the phone, but I haven't seen her in two years, and I discovered she has stopped coloring her hair so it has become salt-and-pepper now, unlike the reddish brown it always was. This makes her look older than necessary; she has a youthful, fairly unlined face. She looked happy to see me but seemed tense too; but she always seems wound up in general. I was genial enough but I felt low-key.

The brunch was at a restaurant overlooking a river, and we sat at a large round table in front of the huge picture windows. Behind us, the blue sky and sunshine belied the fact that it was extremely cold outside.

There were twelve people: my uncle and aunt, my cousin and his wife, my cousin and her husband and three daughters, my sister and her husband, and myself.

It's been many years since Brenda has seen these people, and she brought along old family photos from back in the days when our father was alive and visits to his side of the family in the East were frequent. There was a lot of food and conversation, convivial and friendly, nothing dramatic or even particularly interesting. Plenty of "I can't believe it's been so many years," and "Do you remember...?" As I wrote in my earlier posts, part of the reason Brenda decided to visit was that my uncle and aunt were accepting of her conversion to Christianity, whereas my mother is emphatically not--although as long as it's not discussed or thrown in her face, she can contend with it. In any case, in this atmosphere of acceptance, Brenda wore not one but two crucifixes--one around her neck, the other on a charm bracelet on her wrist; but there was no discussion of religion, just banter as we feasted on an extensive buffet.

It's only at buffets that I compile bizarre meals like the one I had today: a bagel, lox, and cream cheese; two slices of ham; shrimp salad with calamari; a couple slices of rare steak; potatoes au gratin; pineapple; a Bloody Mary; two cups of coffee; and raspberry mousse cake.

I'm still belching. Anyway, it was a fine feast, and I thanked my uncle (who picked up the considerable tab) for his largess.

After brunch we all went over to my male cousin's house so Brenda and Bill could see it. He's done well in business and it's a beautiful place. His master bedroom is as large as my entire apartment. His wife has a nice eye for furnishings, too. Afterward we went to my uncle and aunt's house. Brenda and our aunt got into a long and serious conversation, the details of which I was not privy, but it sounded like intense family stuff coming from Brenda. I spent most of my time talking to my brother-in-law Bill and my uncle. Bill is a bit of an old movie buff himself, so some of the chat was about old Westerns and their stars.

In all, I stayed out in New Jersey for about six and a half hours. There was to be dinner later on at my female cousin's house, but I bowed out of that, not wanting to get back to New York too late in the evening. Anyway, I was ready to go home. Hugs went around, and then my uncle took me to the train. I read about Olivia De Havilland to pass the time as I rode back to New York; she's the topic of the cover story in the new issue of Classic Images, one of my favorite film buff magazines. (See the link to Classic Images on my list of Sites I Like.)

I still regret that Brenda and Bill won't spend some time in the Big Apple during this visit, but I guess it was good enough to see them for a few hours. Maybe they'll stay in New York if they come again. In any case, my uncle and aunt are warm-hearted people, so I hope that Brenda will get a measure of warmth from them that I know she has always sought in vain from our mother, who is ever-critical of her. And I know my uncle is going to take her and Bill for some good East Coast-style corned beef sandwiches, several inches thick. I'll probably talk to Brenda on the phone tomorrow before she leaves to go back West early Tuesday.

"See?" my uncle said as he drove me to the train. "Family can be fun."

It sure can seem complicated, too.

3:15 p.m.--I went out for awhile this afternoon to meet one of my memorabilia dealer friends. Let’s call him Zack. He’d acquired some 30s and 40s nightlife magazines which were more expensive than I ever spend, but he wanted to show them to me before he sold them to another collector.

They had some beautiful pictures of old-time strippers like Ann Corio and Zorita (famous for her snake dance). One magazine of more recent vintage (50s) had a picture of my favorite Eisenhower-era ecdysiast Patti Waggin. Zack knew I wouldn’t want to spring for the whole mag since it was too costly, so he kindly made me a laser copy of the picture gratis.

At this point I have about seven or eight pictures of Patti, all from various magazines, all of which I’ve gotten from Zack.

Seeing him for about a half hour brightened my spirits. He’s a native New Yorker about my age, an enthusiastic guy with a good sense of humor. He also has a passion for contemporary Asian cinema, especially Chinese action, crime, and suspense, and he’s always loaning me movies to watch on top of the pinup magazines he sells me. He’s very astute in his tastes; I’ve enjoyed almost every film he’s loaned me. He loved Memoirs of a Geisha, and he’s probably seen most of the movies that one of its beautiful stars, Gong Li, has made in her native China.

Some of the scenes in the Chinese thrillers he gives me are so over-the-top that I almost can’t believe it, and I think he delights in shocking Sir Cranky; but we have lively, frequently hilarious discussions of the insanity in these flicks. I’ll say, “I couldn’t believe what I was watching,” and Zack will always say something like, “Didn’t I tell ya it was fuckin’ crazy? Didn’t I tell ya? Fuckin’ crazy!!”

After I left Zack, I went over to a magazine store to pick up my monthly issue of Classic Images, a tabloid-size magazine that has articles and interviews about the film stars of old Hollywood. It always arrives on the racks, like clockwork, at the end of the month. Although the quality of the writing varies with the individual pieces, Classic Images covers many now-forgotten (except by buffs) stars and supporting players of days gone by. As a matter of fact, I’m going to put a link to Classic Images on my Sites I Like list. You can read some of their articles on the Web for free, to get a taste of what they cover.

I said in the last post that I was feeling a little out of sorts. I haven’t been taking such good care of myself lately, I confess. This combined with the stress stirred up by my sister’s visit this weekend is making me feel not so hot.

When I was walking back home, I asked myself why I am so unhappy about the prospect of going out to New Jersey to see my sister when she visits with my uncle and aunt; why I have not been able to stop thinking about it for the last couple of days; and why I keep fantasizing of not showing up. The answer finally came to me, almost crystalline in its obviousness. (For the backstory on this, see “My sister, religion, and me.”)

I was unhappy that my sister and her husband chose not to visit me in New York too, but rather to go solely to our uncle and aunt in New Jersey. I told her when she first considered her plans that I didn’t understand why she wanted to do it that way; didn’t she want to have some fun in New York, see a show, have a nice dinner? She didn’t, waving off my suggestions, and now I want to express my still-vibrant displeasure by not going out there for a family brunch attended by uncle, aunt, cousins, et al.

I feel she is “wrong” to have planned her trip this way. As her older brother who has always been there to support her emotionally, I feel slighted. Yet I feel forced to keep these emotions to myself, and put on a pleasant face and attend this brunch. If I express my displeasure, I become the one who is “in the wrong”; I am the nasty and disruptive one, out to cast a pall over everybody else’s good time. And of course, if I should actually decide not to go, I would feel additional guilt.

It’s like being between a rock and hard place. It is also known in psychology as a “double bind”; a situation where you cannot feel good no matter what you do. It is the bind a child feels when an unloving mother tells him to beat it, but then sees his mother get angry when he is hostile in turn. What does he do with his anger? He becomes guilty over it. The child’s anger becomes an impotent joke transformed into self-castrating guilt by the mother’s manipulations. (It could be a father too.) “You don’t have a right to be angry at me!” the mother says, defensive and guilty over her own rejection of the child.

Until science began to lean more towards biochemistry as the cause of schizophrenia, it was theorized that the double bind, enacted through family dynamics, was a cause of madness in people. The double bind is literally “crazymaking.”

When I read about the double bind in my senior year of college, I became so depressed that I decided to drop out of school and move to New York. I had recognized in the double-bind the most poisonous dynamic of my own family, and I sensed that if I didn’t drop out of school and move to New York right away, I would probably go back to Chicago after graduation and be sucked right back into the same old patterns.

Anyway, this is the situation I feel I’m in with my sister Brenda now. I am angry at her, yet I can’t express my displeasure because that will make me seem like a total asshole at this point. Hell, I did express my displeasure earlier, and it did no good! When anger is expressed but is rendered ineffectual, it can grow exponentially. Now I have to keep my mouth shut because how dare I ruffle the waters of a family brunch when my sister is traveling a couple of thousand miles just for two days to see my uncle and aunt! An additional source of my guilt is that the last fifteen years I’ve had little desire to just cross the Hudson River to see them--so aren’t I a total shit for that, too! Yes, I must keep my mouth shut and get up at dawn like a good boy to catch the train and show that I too believe in family solidarity.

When I told my sister I was dismayed about her not staying for a day in New York, she gave me some cockamamie excuse about how expensive the hotel rooms are here. I made a mistake in not expressing my unhappiness more emphatically, because I didn’t want to hurt my sensitive sister’s feelings. But it didn’t matter, because she’d made up her mind firmly, as she is wont to do. So the fact is, I realize now that my own annoyance has little to do with being pissed that I have to get up at 6:30 in the morning to catch a train on a Sunday morning. That was only a red herring. The conflict is between me and my sister Brenda.

I’m in the double bind again and it feels as much like a spider’s web as it always has, and always will.

That’s why I feel today like getting on a bus and leaving for parts unknown...which I won’t do, being the eminently reasonable, responsible, and affable Sir Cranky.

What a sham.

6:11 p.m.--After I wrote the above, while drinking water and eating a bag of pretzels (lunch), I had a half shot of Jameson’s and sat down on my couch to take a nap. I felt a little more peace about the whole situation with Brenda, actually. Having written it out, examined it, I understood at last why I’ve been so angry.

Yes, I’d been traveling back in time to childhood, living old emotions of impotently expressed anger and frustration.

I feel better for having written it out. I had reservations about posting it, but perhaps someone will find it interesting. This is the kind of writing I have used for many years in my personal diaries to calm myself down about things. I examine a problem, dissect it, and sometimes that makes me feel in control of it and not a slave to it.

Remember, Sir Cranky only enjoys being a slave--in erotic fantasy--to a pretty dominatrix.

In the real world, this knight tries to master his passions.

To do so, he calls on the God of Reason.