Number 3

Tonight I sit alone on this muggy apartment on Broadway, and I feel a little like I'm channeling the Kinster. Cigar in hand, I sit down to write; my sweaty back plastered firmly to my grandfather's old leather chair.

After posing as a deliveryman earlier this evening to get into a friends apartment building, I found myself wishing someone would have dropped a black baby doll head with a key attached out the window for me. Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? No.

Lightning is flashing outside, but almost certainly the thunderstorm I so desperately want will not come. The City of New York fails to satisfy almost all my hungers for natural wonder. Only twice in my six year tenure have I ever truly experienced a 'gully washer' in NYC. Its probably a good thing however, because my friends at the Bronx River Alliance tell me it only takes 1/8th of an inch of rain in a short period of time to overflow the sewer pipes and dump raw sewage and street run-off into the mighty Hudson. Note: I'm not kayaking in the Hudson any more.

However similar I feel to Kinkster, I am not him. I don't have a cat running across my keyboard and I don't live above a lesbian dance studio. I've also never written a book or ran unsuccessfully for governor of Texas (twice), two things that Kinky does quite well.

Wait... I have to relight.

Who I'm not is a pretty easy solution to reach. Just who I AM is a more illusive question to answer. A tin-man hula dancer for sure, beyond this who? Answers to this question seem to get farther down the road the farther I go down that road, like some damned mirage on the horizon. Therapy has proven helpful in making me feel more like I know myself, and no doubt more like a New Yorker. Although, I'll admit paying $50 for a haircut makes me feel even more like a New Yorker, and sometimes better about myself (at least I leave with a better appearance, and having talk about more interesting things than me and my issues).

HEY- IT STARTED POURING!! GOING OUTSIDE - PRAY FOR THE CIGAR!
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OK - well I'm soak. And I'm happy. That makes gully-washer number three! I'm going to bed now while the rain still muffles the sound of sirens and screams, and while the humidity and temperature are dropping. The cigar survived and he thanks you for your prayers of wisdom which bestowed enough sense upon his owner to leave him inside. Your prayers of wisdom (and a good soaking) also brought me a little more self-knowledge. I should trust in and seek out those things that make me happy, as I sought out the rain tonight. Standing soaking wet amidst lightning flashes taunting the heavens, "C'mon, is that all you've got!!", can REALLY make one feel alive again!