Frank Sinatra and the Female Narrative (visited by Monkfish)

I went out to dinner, the japanese place. panko crusted monkfish, two glasses (small) of white wine. then the chicken which I couldn't eat. I was full. but the anxiety and the sadness that had been building up inside of me suddenly crashed to the surface. I paid the check and walked across the street for coffee and dessert. I got an iced mocha and a peanut butter cookie. but I couldn't sit there either. when I walked out I saw the hunchback man who lives in my neighborhood. in the daytime he's still a hunchback, but he is sentient, kind. the funeral director on the corner gives him five dollars to sweep up the leaves, so does the deli owner and the furniture guy. he must live somewhere, have a home but everytime I see him he's at the corner of Atlantic and Henry. at night though he's so high on something he can't speak. maybe heroin, maybe alcohol. I don't know. he never recognizes me then so tonight I just walked past him. When I got home I smoked a tiny bit of weed. that didn't help either. so I lay on the couch crying for about a half hour. I thought; didn't I finish with this last week? this hard grieving. apparently not.

I watched a Frank Sinatra movie, Some Came Running. Part of me followed the narrative and the other part of me followed the misogyny. Shirley McLaine plays a hard bitten but unbearably cute "loose woman" who follows Sinatra from Chicago to his hometown. Another actress who I don't know plays the school teacher, the cool blond, who encourages him to be a writer again. But she can't love him! She's too pure! meanwhile, little slutty Shirley trails after him like a puppy dog. But he can't love her! You can't love a tramp. He keeps going back to the school teacher, she keeps saying, no, no, no. Sinatra gives up and marries the tramp. Hey, he tells his sidekick, Dean Martin, stop calling her a pig. nobody's ever loved me like this before. after the ceremony bride and groom are strolling on a carnival midway--- the tramp's gangster boyfriend shoots her dead. No happy endings for small town sluts, even one's as cute Shirley. but still though despite my obvious carping, there was something compelling about the movie. Sinatra's basically one note, but Dean Martin as the card shark is alluring and sexy even though the worst things about women come out of his mouth. I kept telling myself, this is 1955--- women are dames, broads, pigs. At one point, Sinatra tells Shirley to tell clean up his apartment, and she is pathetically grateful. I'd be like, bitch clean up your own damn apartment. At this point, we're talking about a time fifty years in the past, more than fifty. a half century.

sometimes I think thank God I live in New York City and thank God it's not 1955. I wouldn't have survived. I used to like to say that had I been alive during the 17th century I would've been the first witch to burn at the stake--- bitch don't you be telling what I can't do. ha, ha, ha. anyway I tried everything and still ended up sad. I tried writing, I tried drinking, I tried eating, then it's time for an ativan and a good book. it's late now, almost midnight. day is done.