I’m glad it’s Friday at last. I completed one big freelance project and most of a second project this week, and I want to rest.

There was a tempting bill of Neo-Burlesque strippers at the Starshine Burlesque last night down in the East Village, but after I ate a heavy Chinese meal of beef with snowpeas, pork fried rice, and an egg roll, I felt too lazy to get on the subway. Instead I opted for watching a fun DVD from Dark Sky Films (www.darkskyfilms.com) which showcased two British films, 1958’s Blood of the Vampire and 1961’s The Hellfire Club, in a combo horror and swashbuckler double-feature. The program came complete with coming attractions as well as vintage drive-in intermission commercials for the snack bar, with some priceless images of 50s families scarfing down ice cream cones, hamburgers and hot dogs.

Blood of the Vampire is not a supernatural film, but rather a story about a sadistic scientist in the 1880s experimenting with human blood in order to cure an infection he contracts. The scientist was played by Donald Wolfit, a renowned Shakespearean actor, and he is quite memorably evil; and the feisty heroine was enacted by Barbara Shelley, one of the most alluring stars of 50s and 60s English horror films. She had a wonderful, mellifluous voice, and a beautiful face with a sad and questioning quality in her eyes. The movie had more sexual heat showing her soft white shoulders in a low-cut frilly nightgown, than most modern movies have today showing complete nudity.

The second feature, The Hellfire Club, sounded as if it were going to tell the story of decadent British aristocrats in the mid-1700s, tearing the veil away from their secret society devoted to orgies and other forms of excess so beloved by exploitation cinema; but the movie, although entertaining enough, was more of a regular swashbuckler. It only touched on the Hellfire Club’s activities briefly at the end, and very mildly. The sexiest part of this flick was when the dashing young hero steals the clothes of his girlfriend, who has been bathing in a stream; as she pleads for him to return her duds, the camera shoots her exceptionally beautiful naked back from behind, right down to her lush womanly hips. As with the Barbara Shelley footage in Blood of the Vampire, this scene with actress Kai Fischer got more erotic mileage out of a bare back than most movies do now with full-on sex scenes.

The moral? These old movies, even when they were exploitation flicks, made any bit of eroticism seem like a special event; whereas contemporary films just treat it as yet another cynical ingredient in the ticket-selling stew.

I just walked over to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree. It was a way of getting out of my apartment and taking some exercise; I’ve been doing my freelance work at home today, and felt a little isolated.

The tree always looks more interesting to me when I take off my glasses and look at it through my near-sighted eyes. That way it’s an impressionistic mass of colors, softer, more dreamlike.

I once took a beautiful photograph of a smiling mother pushing her laughing little boy in a stroller past the tree. I've taken some good pictures with disposable cameras, and this was one of those shots I took quickly, "shooting from the hip," as it's called. The image was slightly blurry with motion, but also with joy, with the mother and son in the foreground and the tree in the background, the angle of the shot slightly skewed to the left. I wish I knew what I did with the print and the negative...I live in such a cluttered apartment.

Anyway, today there were lots of tourists around, posing in front of the tree and taking pictures themselves. Below the tree, skaters glided on the outdoor ice rink.

Afterward I came home with a cafe mocha which I picked up from Starbucks. It’s a little expensive, but tastier than the coffee I usually get from a nearby diner.

Actually I feel kind of blue today, so I think I better try to take my mind off my emotions and do a little more work. I have the feeling that introspection is not the way for me to go this afternoon...

I’m going to assume that I will be in a better mood tomorrow.

The Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center is going to be lit tonight, and the traffic in midtown Manhattan, where I live, has been intense. It was hard to cross the streets without having to wait for some huge long flatbed truck to pass by, or an armada of SUVs and cabs. The gridlock added to the tension I felt as I walked uptown to see a new podiatrist, all the while morosely anticipating that I would have to endure some in-office procedure that would require two weeks of post-surgery soaking and medication, just what you want during the busy holiday season. However, the visit turned out to be far less taxing than my melodramatic mind imagined it, and I’m glad I decided to wait until after the appointment to stock up on Epsom salts, a new measuring spoon, and sterile bandages. I won’t need them. The doctor's ministrations were bloodless.

You see, over the years I’ve had to see a number of foot doctors for various problems, and almost without exception they wielded the scalpel on the first visit. My response is almost Pavlovian at this point: I expect to be cut when I go a podiatrist. But this new doctor didn’t have to do anything like that. The problem wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Still, it was emotionally exhausting the way I pictured the discomfort and tedious aftercare... which is not good use of my mental faculties. These are minor problems I’m dealing with, and my attitude is childish and fearful.

No wonder I finally went out last night to unwind at the tittie bar. I had to take a break from the anxiety inside my head. This blowing things out of proportion takes a lot of mental energy.

My kid sister Jenny, who’s been facing down cancer in Chicago, has far more grit than her big brother Sir Cranky, who’s really a baby inside. The funny thing is, she calls and emails me to vent her anxieties, and of course I’m the calm voice of reason, a shoulder to lean on whether over the phone or in cyberspace. It’s easier to be cool and collected when counseling other people on how to deal with their fears.

It’s not so much that I fear specifically going to a foot doctor, or even to go get a colonoscopy, which is next on my list (ah, the pleasures and opportunities of middle age); it’s just that I seem to have a free-floating anxiety and fear of personal catastrophe. I think seeing my sister in a life-threatening situation brought this anxiety, which has always been there, closer to the surface in a more raw and volatile way, especially when I’m by myself, which is often since I work as a freelancer.

There’s a line in one of my favorite movies, 1948's Force of Evil, spoken by John Garfield as written by scenarist Abraham Polonsky: “If you don’t killed, it’s a lucky day for anybody.” I think that’s really the way I feel a lot of the time, and have for years. And reading tabloid newspapers and noir novels certainly chains me further to this sentiment...

But I love tabloids and dark crime novels! (Cranky stamps foot.) I won't give them up!

"So let us then perhaps to discuss your masochism, Herr Cranky," says Dr. Freud.

Whew.

Welcome to my labyrinth...

Well, I finally did tonight what I’d been thinking about for awhile. I came back to Manhattan after working at my freelance client’s office in New Jersey, and decided it was time to go out and see some strippers again after four months away from the scene (the last time was last July 28th). After I went home and washed up, I went out to a nearby club and had a beer and watched the stage show.

I was surprised by how quiet the joint was at 7:00 p.m. It’s usually busier then. There weren’t too many dancers either, onstage or off. I saw a few familiar faces--a couple of dancers, one bouncer, one waiter, and the champagne host who always says hello to me even though I never go into the champagne room.

I’d had a shot of Jameson at home before I went out, but I still didn’t feel all that relaxed as I settled into my chair with a Bud Lite. I tipped the dancers onstage but resisted having a lapdance until a cute English redhead came over. But although it was nice to feel her cuddle next to me for the song over by the banquettes, her moves also felt very perfunctory so I just had one twenty-dollar dance. They gotta hook Sir Cranky from the first dance; I like dancers to make my heart race from the git-go, just like the pulp fiction I enjoy reading. I guess getting a lapdance is itself a form of pulp fiction. Anyway, I returned to my seat near the stage and finished my beer, and in thirty-five minutes I’d spent forty-nine dollars: ten for admission, four for coat check, eleven for beer and tip, four for tips to girls onstage, twenty for my lapdance. It was time to leave and get some Chinese take-out for dinner.

Although the visit was nothing special, I’m glad I went. Just seeing some friendly faces and even the brief dance made me feel a little more connected to the flow of things. I’ve been spending too much time lately living in my head, watching every penny, and the presence of some skimpily attired ladies beseeching me for my financial largess made me feel (however delusionally) that I’d gotten back in the old swim of things. I know things are different, but at least it took the edge off, and I’ve been feeling pretty edgy lately. Besides, I've been getting tense thinking about my appointment with a podiatrist tomorrow, anticipating that's going to result in a week or two of hobbling around and having to soak my foot. I figured it was good to go out and have some fun while I was at my suave, toe-tapping best.

I guess when it comes to dancers, though, I’ve been spoiled. I know I go out hoping to meet my next Angela or Lily, who were two of my most favorite girls--not that I can afford another Angela or Lily just now, because I have to watch my dough. Anyway, I remember how the chemistry I felt with them was immediate, how they both engulfed me in their auras from the very first dance. The British redhead tonight was pleasant enough, but anything more than one dance with her was superfluous for me. Either she could use a master class in lapdancing from Angela or Lily...or maybe it’s just that we didn’t click, that it’s just as simple as that.

See how quickly I start to analyze this stuff?

It wasn’t easy getting back to work today after the long holiday weekend, during which I fluctuated between feelings of contentment and gloom. I had a hard time getting started this morning. Just putting together a bag of laundry to drop off at the wash-and-fold felt like a huge mental and physical task. Should I wash these towels today? Is it time to do these sheets? Do I have a clean shirt to wear today, or will I be shirtless if I toss this plaid one in the bag? I finally pulled it together, but at breakfast, I told myself to make a list of things to accomplish today, and that no matter how much I had to grumpily slog through the less scintillating tasks, I would feel better at the end of the day. Well, I managed to get through most of the items, and if I don’t exactly feel perky, I do feel as if I surmounted inertia.

One thing I particularly did enjoy was completing a modest project that I’ve been working on for several weeks, that will bring in a little extra money, but which also was something different from the usual things I do; so it was a new challenge and that was a plus. But I noticed how I couldn’t seem to let go of it today, constantly fiddling with it, wondering if it were perfect, as if the fate of my future depended on it--which is NOT the case. But feeling financial uncertainty lately as a freelance worker has inflamed all sorts of feelings of perfectionism and insecurity in me.

Ah, I knew there was a good reason to accumulate vast wealth when I was younger...as protection against the very situation I’m in! Too bad I didn’t think far enough ahead to amass such dough. Too bad I was so absorbed living “la vie lapdance.”

Anyway, a wise man knows when to get up from the desk and call it a day, and head over to his stack of DVDs...

Which I shall now do.