Somebody in my building buttonholed me in the lovely cool dusk of last evening to ask for whom I was going to vote. Having gotten off the telephone with one of my sisters after a heavy conversation about my mother, I was in no mood for discussing politics...so I was non-committal. In a way, I felt cowardly, but I just didn't want to discuss the topic...

So which candidate is going to promise a stripper in every lap? I haven't heard that in anyone's platform. Because, brother, could you spare a Jackson for a lapdance? My finances are tight...

I was holding off on depositing my stimulus check from the government because I had hoped to use it for something worthy, like new shelves for my freshly cleaned apartment, but it looks like a necessary freelance check is going to arrive late and so I had to use the stimulus for bills instead...well, once I get the freelance check and can deposit it, a little switching back and forth between my checking and savings will (hopefully) restore some of the stimulus $600 for that worthy something...

This morning, when I went to the bank to deposit the stimulus check, one of the financial officers started in about how I should invest my IRA so I get better returns on my money...I always categorically refuse because I don't feel like thinking about that, and simply knowing that I have a little nest egg (which is really paltry, to be honest) is just about the only financial comfort I have...

The bank previously has sent young preppy guys to make this pitch, but today they gave me a motherly middle-aged Frenchwoman and a slender and businesslike Asian-American gal of average attractiveness...I agreed to upgrade my checking and savings accounts because it didn't seem too complicated and I would get an extra 1% interest, but as far as investing the IRA in something chancy, that Asian gal promised to call me in September "just to have a conversation" but she could doll up in a Chinese dress and slit skirt Suzie Wong-style (I have a fetish for that, and Asian women in general), and I'm still going to tell her no dice...I was a tad abrupt and cut her off when she made only a glimmer of the standard pitch this morning, but then I apologized, saying as a freelancer I'm under a lot of money pressure lately and really want to keep things status quo for the time being...

If I could, maybe, perhaps, sell my goddamn novel and make some money, that would be nice, and now that I'm in the concluding laps of this apartment cleaning saga (I need the building management do some painting, and then I'll start buying shelves) I'll be able to get back to trying to find an agent to sell my book...

But it's a crap shoot, and unlike other people who are full of confidence about their projects, I have a hard time seeing the merit in my work (even though two literate people I respect said it was a solid page turner) and I count on nothing until a check has cleared the bank...

Money is so tight I can't even think about going to a strip joint...and only now can I truly appreciate how even though it's a matter of paying for feminine company, when I can't pay for it, I can't have it, and I feel starved...

A chicken I afford to put in my pot, but a stripper on my lap? What are the candidates' positions on Universal Sleaze Care?

It's been several weeks since my last post. Rather than blogging, I was completely absorbed in the de-cluttering of my apartment, and the job is basically done. It took four months, which tells you how much stuff I have. I schlepped half of it to my storage space, and the other half I'm going to keep at home. The next step is getting the place painted and then buying shelves for my books, magazines, and videos...so I can live in a more orderly manner.

What else have I been up to? I treated myself to a couple of visits to my favorite stripclub last week and had a nice time with a dancer I had never met before. My reliable favorite girl, Lily, is away on her vacation, or I probably would have hung out with her.

My sister Jenny is arriving in New York for a visit tomorrow. My long-time readers will recall her battle with cancer, which I wrote about here in 2006. Knock wood, she's been doing a lot better (thank you all again for your prayers and kind words during that crisis) and is coming here with my brother-in-law and nephew and niece. It's going to be fun to show them around "Cranky's New York"--but not the stripclubs, though! I mean, they know of my predilection for naked dancing ladies, but it's not the type of adventure I care to share with my kid sister or her family...I guess it's really a solitary pursuit.

I have to say the apartment cleaning really exhausted me. The sifting through of two or three thousand books, magazines, videos, manuscripts, photos, and so forth, and organizing them in boxes, was really draining. Of course, I did it on top of all my freelance work. I think it's going to take me a couple of weeks to clear my head. I felt so befuddled last night that I couldn't do a simple problem in arithmetic when I was balancing my checkbook. I was making a simple mistake in subtraction and I couldn't see it. I had to call my writer/artist friend ZP, who looks like a tall Kafka, and ask him what I was doing wrong. It was a weird feeling...I guess I was just really tired. Still, I went for a physical yesterday (my first in two years) and I think my cleaning project helped me lose seven pounds since my last physical two years ago...

I went to Columbus Circle this evening for a little while and watched the girls go by, something I haven't done much this summer. Then I got cold sesame noodles from the Chinese takeout for dinner.

Now, here is an odd coincidence. When I was at Columbus Circle, sitting near the Columbus statue that is surrounded by fountains, enjoying the gentle breeze and watching the waning of the blue light of day, I saw a young woman reading a book called As a Man Thinketh. I read this book several years ago, and it's a good inspirational volume. Basically it says that what you have in your mind is what produces your external reality. Something that it's good to be reminded of. Anyway, when I went home with my cold noodles, I decided to watch a movie that has been on my shelf for about two months called The Phantom Speaks, and which I had never seen before. It's from 1945 and was recorded for me by a friend. The story is about a scientist who believes people's spirits can come back after death if their will is strong enough--determined enough to return from the land of the dead to the world of the living. The scientist goes to see a condemned criminal whom he believes has this will strong enough to make the return, and after the man is executed, his spirit does indeed come back--only to inhabit the body of the scientist and force him to commit acts of vengeance and murder. In the end of the movie, the scientist goes to the electric chair himself for the murders he committed while possessed by the spirit of the criminal. Stanley Ridges played the scientist; he is a forgotten but magnificent actor who also played a similar role in Black Friday with Boris Karloff. Ridges died about 1950.

But here's the coincidence. At the end of the movie, when the scientist is going to the chair, the camera cuts to one of the prison functionaries holding a Bible, and the passage he reads is: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." The very source, I believe, of the title and theme of that book the woman was reading at Columbus Circle...

Unfortunately, the print of the movie was cut by about seventeen minutes, so I couldn't determine definitively from the complete context if the film's use of this quote was a deliberate way of undercutting the supernatural angle, or at least adding a touch of ambiguity. It seemed to suggest that perhaps the scientist, while mild-mannered on the surface, really had a lot of rage underneath, and rather than actually being possessed by the dead criminal's spirit, actually had a psychotic breakdown in which he convinced himself of such possession but in reality was only expressing his own long buried, inchoate rage. Because think about it: why did he only find a strong enough will to return from the dead in a criminal? There could easily have been others with equally strong wills who could have participated in his experiment. No, the use of this quote seems to suggest that the scientist WANTED to hook up with the criminal to express his own dark nature...his own dangerous thoughts...but I'd have to see the missing seventeen minutes of the movie to determine if the film purposely intended this more "logical" interpretation instead of accepting the supernatural explanation of a spirit's return after death.

In any case, I found it startling to see the woman reading that book, and then to just happen to select this identically themed movie for viewing over dinner, out of the hundreds of DVDs I could have plucked out of my boxes! Or maybe the universe is trying to remind me to keep a better attitude so my external life will be less chaotic and cluttered...

Of course, it can certainly be argued that one's attitude is not SOLELY responsible for one's external reality--and not having read that book in years, I can't vouch for its take on this. But common sense tells us that there are certainly other factors that can affect one's life. But attitude can have a lot to do with how we feel about our circumstances, and certainly affect them positively or negatively...uh-oh, I'm starting to sound like a self-help columnist. I don't want to be warm and fuzzy, I want to be curmudgeonly.

I guess a secondary theme of that movie might be, "You are the company you keep!" And if you're hanging around with the soul of a definitely guilty killer...well, you're asking for trouble.

Hmm. Now that I think more about it, I may have been drawn to watching this movie because before I took it home two months ago, the friend who recorded it flipped through the chapters on a DVD player to show me that the recording didn't pixilate. I may have seen that last image of the quote from the Bible, stored it subconsciously in my memory bank, and then was compelled to seek out the movie after seeing the woman reading the book at Columbus Circle...

You see? I'm trying to find a rational explanation instead of the cosmic one, just like I think the movie was trying to do.

What I remember most vividly about Cyd Charisse are two things not mentioned in any of her obituaries. In the 1949 movie Tension, made before she became a star, she plays Richard Basehart's neighbor, a lovely and supportive girl who sticks by him through some very serious noirish complications. He's suspected of a murder that he didn't commit, but which he thought of committing...the real mystery of the movie is why he even considers the murder (of his vulgar, cheating ex-wife) once he's met Cyd and she's obviously sweet on him! But before he comes to his senses, he's got to do stupid things and suffer a little, otherwise there would have been no movie. A scene at the beach at night spotlights Cyd most becomingly. This is available on DVD.

The second thing that Miss Charisse stamped on my soul was a scene in the 1958 gangster/noir melodrama Party Girl, where she plays a showgirl who slaps a man in the face (whom I believe was John Ireland) with her shoe! A stunning moment of female aggression and dominance that was as memorable as any of her dance numbers in other films. I don't think this is available on DVD yet, though.

I just thought I'd mention these things to round out the picture of her accomplishments given out in the media...

My condolences to her husband, singer Tony Martin. Must be very tough to suddenly lose a great gal like that after sixty years of marriage. Only a few months ago, they were written up in all the New York papers when Tony--in his nineties--did a nightclub show.

Anyway, here's a link to a site that sells posters of Cyd, just so you can see her legs! You rarely see stems like these anymore. Women are too busy in the gyms making their gams hard and muscular.

AllPosters.com

In the month since my last post, I went through construction in two areas of my apartment, which was mandated by the building management because of an upcoming renovation project. So my place is a little better, but I still have a lot of cleaning and packing and storing to do in the other part of the space, which is still full of books and magazines and videos. A lot of dust to clean up. As I said in my previous entry, I don't really want to write too much about it, just get it done...

But I will say that cleaning a cluttered apartment is not unlike the experience I had when I wrote my (as-yet-unsold) novel last summer. Stress, frustration, then exaltation when progress is clearly made.

When the place is done and straightened up, it will definitely be better. It's better already, because now I have reclaimed my kitchen as a cooking area. I will not use it as a storage space for books and magazines and videos ever again. I hope to put a small table into it, so I can eat there too. So far I've been just making soups and coffee and sandwiches, but I'll eventually move onto more advanced repasts.

Haven't been to the stripclubs in three and a half weeks. I was tempted to go last Friday, until I noticed I had a 40% off coupon from Borders that would expire that night. So instead I picked up the box set of The Streets of San Francisco, a show I never watched in the 70s but which sounds pretty good now with its lineup of actors. It cost me $26, or the price of approximately one and a third lapdances. Karl Malden and Michael Douglas made a good team of detectives. In the episode I watched last night, Janice Rule played a call girl stalked by a deranged religious fanatic, portrayed by James Olsen. She was quite an attractive actress and did a good job with the role.

Have to get back to trying to sell my novel. I have to redo the synopsis for submission to agents since I rewrote the ending. It's funny, the book was such a preoccupation for so long, but now it seems a part of my past, as my mind and body get swallowed up in this colossal effort to unclutter my living space. But that's how the mind works.

Since I last blogged seventeen days ago, I had to significantly ramp up the pace of my apartment cleaning because of some construction that will be suddenly done in the building where I live. Understatement of the year: it has been very taxing, as well as dusty...

I don't really want to write about it, but just get it all done...I hope to completely finish the apartment cleaning by the time when my sister Jenny from Chicago is coming to visit New York with her family, in the middle of the summer...

As my longtime readers will recall, Jenny had a battle with cancer, but she has been doing much better (knock wood).

By "apartment cleaning" I mean organizing my stuff, putting it in boxes, and bringing a lot of it to storage. And keeping the stuff I can't bear to part with at home.

Ah, life in the cramped quarters of New York...

However, I wonder if the pace of the cleaning (nine hour sessions of it, one day after the next) is aging me prematurely. I went out to McDonald's for breakfast and Wendy's for lunch today, and received senior discounts without asking for them. The counter girls assumed I was over sixty-two...

Who am I to argue with a discount, even if at fifty-six I still don't actually qualify?

As I ate my spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's Value Menu, I read a 1953 noir novel by Charles Williams called "Nothing in Her Way," about a female con artist. I came across a description of this dame by the admiring narrator: "I watched her across the lobby, conscious she was still one of the most beautiful girls I'd ever seen and thinking it was a shame more of them didn't learn to walk." I immediately knew what the narrator was saying; too many women never learn that beautiful manner of walking that they are capable of, and that makes them special in a way men can never be.

Then, as I was walking home, I saw a girl crossing sunny Eighth Avenue that perfectly fit Williams' description. She was dark blonde, with a long pony tail, curvy and busty in a tight red top and gray pedal pushers and strappy backless heels that showed off very well-arched feet that I estimated were probably size five. She had a big colorful purse under her right arm that to my mind symbolically suggested a vagina that could provide sustenance for the whole world of men. And yep, she had that walk. Lana Turner had it too. That straight-shouldered but slightly saucy stride, utterly confident on those heels. Boy, I wish I deserved a woman like that, but she was out of my league. Couldn't get close to anyone like her without paying for it in the coin of the realm.

Anyway, this passing vision revived my faith in the women of New York, most of whom hardly stimulate or excite me at all any more. I've been worried about my libido, but maybe it's not me after all--maybe it is most of the young women. They basically dress and move like young men, and being an old movie and pinup buff, I know the feminine potential of women--and find it sorely missing on the streets of contemporary Gotham. It's not enough to wear high heels, girls. But this chick had the stuff. The walk. Glad I got an eyeful.