I had some heavy duty Mexican food Wednesday night, with a colleague; margaritas and cheesecake too. I had to walk home more than two miles to work it off...I wrote my last entry under the influence of those margaritas. I guess the tequila made me a little more caustic than usual...but I really was disappointed in those Jessica and Rose photos.

Anyway, my mind is pretty absorbed in this other writing project of mine. I might as well stop being coy and admit that it's a novel, my fourth stab at this type of thing. Whereas my last unpublished opus was 125,000 words long and more than 500 pages, I've limited this one to 60,000 words tops and 250 pages.

When I'm not writing my daily quota of at least 2000 words, I'm thinking about what's going to happen to my characters next. I don't seem to be completely present in the "here and now," you might say, except when I'm doing my freelance work. The need to pay one's rent, to paraphrase Dr. Samuel Johnson, concentrates the mind wonderfully.

I'm not sleeping well, or when I am sleeping I'm having weird dreams. It's a strange time, an unreal time. I dreamed last night that I got into a cab to go up to the Bronx, and there was a super-sleazy prostitute sprawled in the front seat of the cab. She didn't look too healthy, with scars all over her legs.

I guess that's what I get for perusing a noir novel about Skid Row bums and hookers as my "bedtime" reading.

On other fronts, my kid sister Jenny, whose cancer treatment was successful last year (knock wood), still has various health-related issues to deal with, and I think the worries of the last year have been exhausting her. We talked for a good while yesterday on the phone (she lives in the Midwest). I encouraged her to take some time to chill out and smell the roses again.

I too feel exhausted by the emotional ups and downs of the last year, which maybe keeps me coming back to this feeling of unreality.

For example, I look around my extremely cluttered apartment, especially when I wake up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and see all the shadowed piles of books and magazines and videos, and I think, "Do I actually live this way? Is this me? Is this real??"

So I have to press ahead with my writing project, because it provides me hope for positive life-altering things in the future. At the same time, I have to remind myself that I'm not a genius, and the main goal is to tell a good story, and not to get bogged down in pretension and puffery.

After all, if I can make some decent extra money with this project at some point down the line, maybe I can put some in my savings account and some in a few strippers' garters! I haven't had that latter pleasure in more than a month.

Saw the new issue of GQ tonight on the newsstand, with Jessica Biel as the covergirl. Disappointing photos!! The color makes her look as if she's made out of wax, and only one shot, where she's smiling, has any real sense of life. I bet a bunch of amateurs with drugstore disposables could have made more appealing pix.

By the way, I didn't dream about Jessica last night (see my previous post), so I guess you might say I stood her up for our "date"!

I also saw a portfolio of pix of Rose McGowan tonight in the new issue of the British mag Arena. Another stinker of a layout! Tired over-exposed shots in the faux "candid" manner, these are further proof that Ellen von Unwerth is one of the most overrated shooters in the business!

Your neighborhood graduation photographer could make better images than both these mags offer! So much of so-called "big time" photography is absurdly off the mark these days. I am continually, continually disappointed in the stuff I see.

And is there anybody left on planet earth who thinks Angelina Jolie is sexy, besides the editors of Esquire who just put her on their cover? I saw her on Charlie Rose last night talking about her new movie, and she looked about as lively as a person who's just been told she's going to have tuna casserole for dinner.

That's what my fortune cookie message read the other night. I'd like to believe it.

My problem has always been that I'm deeply pessimistic, always figuring I wouldn't succeed at long-range, risky goals with no guarantee of a positive outcome. In a way, this is a result of the Depression-era thinking I inherited from my parents, who grew up in relative poverty during the 30s and therefore felt it was most practical to go for situations with a sure return. But right now, with this new writing project I'm working on, I'm trying to lock my Inner Naysayer in the cellar and take a chance and tell myself it'll work out.

"Your present plans are going to succeed!" Let that be as true as the non-stop belching I experienced after eating my sweet and sour chicken and pork fried rice.

Meanwhile, last night I dreamed that the actress Jessica Biel moved in next door to me, and agreed to meet me for a date! What a dream. Very enjoyable. We didn't actually get to go on the date, since I woke up before it could happen, but in the dream she let me into her apartment and we flirted for awhile before we finally settled on a mutually acceptable time to meet. She wanted 3 a.m., pretty late for a date but you know these celebrities; but I lobbied for 1 a.m. since I did have to get up in the morning to write. She saw the wisdom of my plan and 1 a.m. it was scheduled to be. Hey, she's busy, I'm busy, we just have to pencil in our pleasures in where we can.

She looked just like she did in that trailer I saw for the new movie she's in with Adam Sandler and Kevin James, the name of which I can't remember. They play two guys who pretend to be gay roommates so they can get some sort of government civil union benefits, and Jessica, in all her bodaciousness, presents a threat to this masquerade with Sandler unable to keep his eyes off her gorgeousness.

Maybe she'll show up for our date tonight? I better go to sleep at least by 12:30.

I had to get back to my "real" life today and go out to my freelance client in New Jersey, but I got so much done today that I think I've got the rest of the week to pursue my fiction-writing whim in the city. (See my previous post for the backstory on this.)

I shouldn't call it a whim, though, because it's serious...but I have to keep my attitude light, hence the self-effacement.

Yeah, so tomorrow, I'll get back to bangin' out this yarn I got hummin' in my head, doing my quota of words.

This evening, after getting back from New Jersey, I met my writer/artist friend ZP, who looks like a tall Kafka, for dinner. He's starting a new job training program tomorrow. Yes, many people are trying to go in new directions, not just myself...

Another friend of mine went on a diet and she lost three pounds in four days.

Meanwhile, to switch focus, the parade of outrageous cleavage I see on the streets and elsewhere continues to both distract my attention from important things, and demean the value of a woman showing off her cleavage at all. Maybe in a few years women will walk around bare-breasted, like they did in the ancient Minoan civilization?

Well, I'm not looking forward to it. A little discretion is the soul of eroticism for me. But I know lots of people don't feel that way at all.

I gave myself a gift this week--a full week to concentrate on a fiction project, purely on speculation, with no guarantee of eventual sale or success. Damn, that was hard to do, being a wage-oriented fella; but I was ahead in my regular paid freelance work so I decided to give myself this opportunity for a full week.

Although I've had my ups and downs over the last several days--like waking up at 6:30 this Saturday morning convinced that everything I've written is total shit destined for the cyber waste basket--I've worked everyday on this project and so far I'm hanging on. My writing is going in some interesting, unusual directions. Maybe it is total shit, but at least I'm entertaining myself for the moment.

I went out for lunch after finishing the day's quota (minimum of 2000 words) and it's getting hot out there.

I find the crowded Manhattan streets sometimes very discombobulating, especially when it's hot and sunny out. There are droves of people going in every direction, stopping, starting, staring, and lingering, and it's slow going sometimes. I start to feel actually confused by all the visual turmoil. On top of that, I feel horny from looking at all the half-undressed gals in their cleavage-baring tops, low-slung shorts, and bare flip-flopped feet.

It is torture being a middle-aged man seeing all these beautiful but unavailable young beauties. Torture.

The funny thing is--I don't want much from them. What makes it torture, actually, is that I feel invisible to them. All it takes to satisfy me is the occasional smile I get from some gal who's self-confident enough to realize that connoisseurs of beauty are going to look upon her with an appreciative eye. Such a smile relieves that tortured, frustrated feeling, and I am momentarily at peace with the world.

You see, I really don't want to fuck them, although I certainly wouldn't turn down the opportunity (especially if they got on top). Even Errol Flynn couldn't fuck 'em all (a fact which made him cry once, probably when he was in his cups). I just want them to SEE ME, too. And I don't want to have to transform myself in any way, shape, or form to get that attention. I'm not going to the gym...fuck that. FUCK IT! And pass the chocolate eclairs. Alas, women need their eye candy too (otherwise why does the bland Matthew McConnaghy constantly grace the covers of magazines as the exemplar of the "sexy bachelor"?) and so I'll just have to settle for the crumbs I get from sending out my more cerebral aura...the smiles I get from the women who, in their own way, are connoisseurs of men, and realize the compliment of a discerning male glance from a true lover of women, cloaked though he may be in the vestiges of the ordinary!

The ironic thing is, when I'm writing up a storm, I don't feel ordinary at all; I feel like Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopin. And it is the disconnect between this feeling and the lack of recognition in the outside world when I'm away from my desk that is slowly...driving me...mad.