Serendipity...

I wasn't sure what to eat this morning, but when I went downstairs to the lobby of my building, one of the porters had brought in French toast for his breakfast. The aroma answered my question. I went to a coffee shop where I had a most lovely repast of French toast with cinnamon apples, while reading the newspapers.

After my paean to Asian girls last night, more serendipity: I opened the New York Post this morning to see a gorgeous full page picture of the city's Miss Chinatown. What a beauty, and just the kind of picture I like: a nice smile, bright eyes, optimistic expression. It said she's going to be the leader of a Chinese New Year parade. The perfect young lady to help usher in the year 4705!--in the opinion of this pulchritude-obsessed Occidental.

Now, less than serendipitous is that I turned on the radio as I got out of bed, only to hear that Britney Spears shaved her head. Is this true? That's not something I wanted to contemplate. It reminded me of a model I once knew socially who shaved her long black hair, went bald, and got a skull tattooed on her noggin. Very nice gal and all that, but by the gods! Shaved female heads are what I associate with concentration camps and humiliating punishment for women accused of being World War 2 collaborators...but I guess these girls who trim their tresses don't share my visual sense of history.

Even guys who shave their heads when they actually still have full manes irk me. They're adopting as a fashion accessory the very look I am forced to sport by genetics, and which I've only grumpily made the best of.

Anyway, I hope Miss Chinatown never trims her locks; in her picture they looked lustrous under her tiara.

Hmm, I wonder if this is the weekend to go out and get spanked by a Chinese dominatrix. Do you think I've earned it?

I went out to dinner with my writer friend Rexx tonight, and as we were looking out the window a very pretty Asian girl walked by. My exaggerated reaction to her beauty made my buddy laugh. Sometimes I can act like a real clown. If I'd be able to pop my eyes out of their sockets for effect, I would've done it. Maybe I should get a pair of those glasses with false eyeballs on springs, as they might come in handy for the Sir Cranky Show which I can perform at the drop of a hat (or at the passing of any particularly fetching young lady, these days usually of the Asian variety).

Ah, where we all these beautiful Asian girls when I was a young man? I swear, I might actually have gotten married to one of them.

Now you see stunning Asian chicks everywhere in New York, but that wasn't the case thirty-three years ago when I moved here. Or at least I never saw many who caught my eye the way they constantly do now.

A couple of months ago Rexx had an opportunity to attend a press junket and group interview with the Chinese superstar Gong Li, who is very gorgeous in such movies as Memoirs of a Geisha and the recent Curse of the Golden Flower. He wasn't able to make it, which didn't faze him much, but I was very disappointed! I had been looking forward to hearing secondhand what it was like to be in the same room with this extraordinary actress and world-class beauty, even if he'd just been part of a team of interviewers pitching questions.

Well, I find my own Asian superstars in daily life. One of the girls who works at the Chinese take-out place I frequent is as beautiful and alluring as any Far Eastern movie goddess. And I've known some Asian strippers who could give Lucy Liu a run for the money in the looks and charisma departments.

Yes, I'm hung up on Asian women these days, not so much Asian-Americans but the native-born gals, especially Chinese and Japanese. They seem to blend the flinty feistiness of the modern female with aspects of an older, more traditional feminine manner--and I find this package extremely appealing, being as I am a grumpy emotionally-scarred male veteran (or victim?) of the rude and strident American feminist era of the 70s and 80s. In other words, I can more readily deal with a contemporary woman's sense of self-reliance when it is wrapped in the velvet glove of a retro femininity grounded in cultures which understand that the tensions between men and women can be experienced as a dance, not a war.

Or maybe that's just my fantasy of what the interactions would be like, based on my admittedly limited contact with Asian females who practice the professions of strippers, waitresses, cashiers, laundresses, and the girl who punched my ticket at a Japan Society movie screening.

Hmm, sometimes when I pursue my subject right to the wall, I start to wonder if I know what the hell I'm talking about.

Whatever. In the final analysis, Asian women are just so damn beautiful to look at, and maybe that's what concerns me the most.

I hear they are releasing the new one dollar coins today, with the possible goal being for them to eventually replace the dollar bill...the New York Times had a long article today about whether this replacement can and will ever happen, but my concern is how will strippers get tipped if there are no dollar bills? If the smallest bill becomes a fiver, they will be in serious trouble. Guys mostly tip in singles. Will the dancers have to wear coin purses affixed to their garters or g-strings, or put little collection boxes on the stage? Will they pass a hat at the end of their sets? Or in the manner of ancient dancing girls, will coins simply be tossed at their feet?

Somehow I doubt that the United States Mint is factoring this into the equation...

Still, I am sure the ever-resourceful stripclub industry is, even as I write, assigning its engineers and scientists to develop possible solutions to the problem, should coins ever make dollar bills extinct.

I feel a little better now. Despite the cold wind and the icy snow-laden streets, I took myself out for a decent meal. I had a delicious concoction called "Pizza Bolognese" with ground beef, olives, and tomatoes, and I washed it down with a glass of merlot. The restaurant wasn't fancy, just a good coffee shop that nonetheless put out red table cloths in the spirit of Valentine's Day and had cut-outs of Cupids and hearts on the windows facing the dark and snowy street.

Unexpectedly, some business associates (actually, a married couple) FedExed me a small box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, so I can munch on those too.

Earlier I was preparing the figures for my taxes (as a freelance worker, I always have to pay a lot on April 15th) and maybe that's partly what got me down earlier.

I start to daydream that I must do something colossal and great to change my life for the better, but when I come down to reality later I am just left with the mundane situation of my life, and that can really put me in a spin sometimes.

I am under terrible stress right now from financial concerns connected to my work, and this is one of the worst periods I've gone through in years. I feel angry and distressed and dissatisfied with almost everything and everybody (including myself), and the fact that I can't afford to adequately blow off steam in the stripclubs and find myself a regular dancer to patronize and hang out with is only making it worse.

I don't want a girlfriend. I want a stripper whom I can visit at the club when I want and just have conversation and sexy fun with. But that takes spare cash, and cash is something I can't spare right now.

I hope by this time next year things are better. I just have to figure out a way to make them so.

I feel like I'm at an impasse today. My inner censor is very strong and I am having trouble even thinking of things to write. I want to write something that will make the world sit up and take notice, but I don't feel I have it in me. And I don't want to write anything less than that.