"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'."

Shall we dance, Mr. Dasgupta?

When he's good, he's very very good. But when he's mad, he's brilliant.



I know there are certain things that I should do right away with my life.

Let's start with the easiest- driving to work. Makes absolute sense. I save either the daily cab bill of 300 bucks or the sweaty and uncomfortable ride back home on a train. Moreover, I have always believed that I am a much more responsible drinker when I know that I need to get behind the wheel in the foreseeable future. And then I sometimes think that no one is ever going to marry a guy who owns a car but seldom drives- whatever the reason. Not that marriage is a huge priority. Now. I think I will start driving to work, as soon as I can get myself to concentrate on some thing for 3 minutes straight, either on my way to work (which is pretty early in my case- keeping my eyes open is a challenge) or on the way back, when I still have the sounds of the lines buzzing, the screens flasshing or the shouts across the dealing floor. But then those are all excuses- the bottom line is that I just don't possess an attention span of greater than 3 mins. What a pity. What a waste. May be I should get a driver.

Next, and again in order of ease is buying a house. I know that it makes economic sense. Absolute economic sense. Today I even calculated the rental yield ( a measure developed by no less than TWO) and it comes to 5%, which according to TWO is a borderline case. My excuses (reasons, actually) are three- Not enough money- which is not entirely true since I know I do have (or can generate with considerable ease) the available finances. I have done the math. Second, I think the entire act of buyin g a house will tie me down to this city and to this job. And as much as I love my job and I love the city, being tied down is just not me. Just not. Finally, I think buying a house has this entire responsible and somewhat coming of age feel about it. And that is not something that I want just now in my life. probably never, but definately not now. I think if i buy a house, except for the pressure of keeping up the mortgage payments, every other motivation is just going to disappear from my life (which at 28 is not a great thing to happen). Debateable, but when you are fighting with the man in the mirror, such debates are easily won.

Finally, getting married. Whew!!! Now that is the toughie. That's what has me completely foxed. The reasons why marriage is necessary. Slowly the people I'd like to hang out with are dropping off the bachelor cisrcuit, the women I'd like to ask ou are vanishing and those that are there are increasingly the people I don't want in my life. The wild parties are fewer by the year and quiet Saturday evenings watching a movie on DVD or reading a book are less rare. I still have invites for weekends out, but well not really the ones I would enjoy accepting. Connections happen, but more infrequently, and are often forced realizations. And chemistry comes up all too often. I need to get more organized, less reckless. I am making quite a bit of money, someone has to step and stem the bleed. Reasons enough. But in this case there are problems galore, and the biggest one is finding the right person. The women I like, don't like me. Well may be they like me, but no chemistry and hence no biology. The women I don't see myself marrying are almost always there, but what the heck. I think my attention span is getting shorter by the minute and my views more set. And if I set my mind on someone, getting it off is so much more difficult. AAnd the problem is that the more I sink into my world, the more difficult it gets to get out. And of course I like it a lot more. it is a nice world- the books, the movies, the drink and the occassional interesting and varied company.


And then at some level I keep thinking that I am blowing it all away. Esepcially after I saw 25th Hour. And that scene... Here's how it goes (Some might find the content distrubing):

When he's good, he's very very good. But when he's mad, he's brilliant. Up the creek without a paddle, Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) curses everything and everyone around him.
The 25th Hourwritten by David Benioff, from his novel

(Monty walks into the bathroom. He looks in the mirror. In the bottom corner, someone's written Fuck You!)
Monty: Yeah, fuck you, too.
Monty's Reflection: Fuck me? Fuck you! Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it.
Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back.
Fuck squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job!
Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores and stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!
Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35.
Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English?
Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from!
Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds!
Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gecko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Imclone! Adelphia! Worldcom!
Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, because they make the Puerto Ricans look good.
Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, and their St. Anthony medallions. Swinging their, Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos.
Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermés scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart!
Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take fives steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on!
Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust!
Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants.
Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin Otisville, Jay!
Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Alqueda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fueled fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal, Irish ass!
Fuck Jacob Elinski, whining malcontent.
Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery, my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass.
Fuck Naturel Rivera. I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back. Sold me up the river. Fucking bitch.
Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar. Sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to firemen and cheering the Bronx Bombers.
Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue. From the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it. Let the fires rage. Let it burn to fuckin ash then let the waters rise and submerge this whole, rat-infested place.

Monty: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and then you threw it away, you dumb fuck!(He takes a breath and tries to rub away the words.)

One of my favorites... Lost and Found after 6 years.

Sleeve Notes for "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?"

Coming down off the nova somewhere near the boiled egg that is the Royal Albert Hall, we watch Paul's sun crossed with John's star and hold ice cream hands. Someone slipped on a cassette as the one you wanted left with someone else but somehow it was cool because as the music filled the shadows, you heard a sound that was a million miles away from fakery and a step away from your heart.
Just like it always did, this sound puts the swagger back into your step, the rush into your blood, but somehow, and I don't know how, they had become deeper, wider, soulful, better at their craft, inspired by so many things like a world that is tilting who knows where and the applause they always knew was theirs but waited so impatiently to receive. Words cut you from all angles, backed up by a monumental sound that rises high, high and high to crash against your rocks and then changes, majestically and magically to soothe the wounds inside.
As you are dragged inside on this trip abandon, you hear a council estate singing its heart out, you hear the clink of loose change that is never enough to buy what you need, boredom and poverty, hours spent with a burnt out guitar, dirty pubs and cracked up pavements, violence and Iove, all rolled into one, and now all this.
At the end you flip over and start again because now you are not isolated. They have gone to work so that you can go home. High above the day turns pink and you feel your feet lift above the ground as new roads open up in front of you. In this town the jury is always rigged but the people know. They always know the truth. Believe. Belief. Beyond. Their morning glory.

P.H. in the summer of '95.