The Illy Funpack

Irony is a natural law.
I am in what has recently become my favorite internet cafe, on my favorite avenue downtown. I have been coming here regularly for almost a couple months now. I have come here mostly on very hot days -- for the days so far have been, mostly, very hot. I have never enjoyed the operational presence of the existing air conditioner.
Today is an atypical day. It is not hot outside. In fact, it is overcast and it has just stopped raining. The air conditioner is on.
I rest my case.
In an attempt at escaping the chilly breath of the contraption, I will retire underground, to my favorite cafe, where I will enjoy a wuss-like decaf cappuccino and write about why I love my sex life. Glamour are making a call for story subjects, and I am responding.

Yesterday, a cab drive restored my faith in humanity. It was one of those almost surreal occurences where perfect, intimate camaradery with a complete stranger comes naturally. The cabbie, a plain and jovial man in his later 40s, started telling me about the guy he was talking to when I approached him -- a younger pal who owns a pretty profitable vegetable garden. He then went on to tell me about his own plans to start a vegetable garden on his in-laws' piece of land. I, in my turn, told him about my friend Daria I had just visited and her cats. As we were nearing my neighborhood, he praised it as one of the "cleaner, quieter" parts of the city, which made me mention the Incident as a counter-example. The cabbie showed genuine sympathy and, when he had pulled in front of my building, he asked "Do you want me to stick around until you walk through your door, just to make sure you are safe?". I declined, because my door was only 5 paces away from the cab, but I was moved. That cabbie was a Nice Man.
I also had an adorable vision towards the end of the ride. While I was rummaging through my bag in search of my wallet, the dispatcher made a call for an address "just outside the Jilava penitenciary" ("Jilava", the feminine adjective of "jilav", meaning "clammy", is the largest penitenciary in the Bucharest area). No driver hurried to pick up the order, so the dispatcher insisted "the client says they're willing to wait for however long it may take". It was at that moment that an image became imprinted on my inner retina, of a convict released on a warm July night, enjoying their first moments of freedom, after having learned patience. My heart, drunk on the warm, polluted dusk, basked in the unlikely yet possibly accurate thought that the ex-con was now an honest, benevolent member of society, ready to make up for a life of crime by living with the kind of selfless dedication to the good of fellow creatures that one normally notices in Catholic nuns born in very poor Third World countries. It was lovely.

Aha! Studebaker knew knew Shevaun was 12! Now that, I am compelled to say, is fucked up! No hair on my body would have stood on its hind legs if she had been 16, 15 even -- girls are, generally, sexually mature at that age. But not at 12!
Child sex is one of the few things I find it impossible to comprehend, and I have a feeling it may be a cultural response on my part. The Judaeo-Christian world holds ample examples of unions that we would, now, sanction with many years in prison: in the 17th Century, before Malthusianism gained ground, girls of "good families" used to be customarily married off in their early teens to "cousins" well past their prime. And everyone rejoiced. My own great-grandmother was married when she was 15, and, according to another family legend, played Double Dutch in the street with her girlfriends the morning after the wedding night. Nobody cringed.
But the thought that one could fantasize about a 12 year-old... I guess I am simply unable to relate to that. I like big cocks, big asses and, sometimes, big boobies. I do believe a lot of the mental mechanisms of sexual arousal and enjoyment have to do with power -- exercising it and letting it be exercised upon you. But a 12 year-old? Would a 12 year-old feel the genuine desire to possess me sexually and would they be able to comprehend what is going on? I certainly wouldn't have, at 12, and I was pretty darn precocious.
Of course, the Misanthropic Bitch is of a different opinion...

Link time!
A wonderful story that gets me misty-eyed, about Morrissey's fanbase among Californian Mexicans.
Absurd. Absurdly funny. The Man Who Fantasizes About Wrapping Roy Orbison In Cling Film.
Eric Gillin, who always writes beautifully, tells of his mother's death.

Oh yes. I dedicated the latter half of yesterday to religious study (reading bits of the Bible, an almost always fun activity), inspired by this. Ecclesiastes is a wonderful piece of work, dude! Leaving the bits that Existentialists did not hesitate to exploit aside, it is one of the best written parts of the Bible. And the spirit of the piece is actually not as bleak as one might think -- yes, tis all chasing the wind, but this is God's plan. That's comforting, isn't it?

Health slowly tottering on the path to good, but still not in ace shape. Waist area hurts.
Morale is good, though, after getting over insecurity moment on my way across town, concerning study in foreign country, away from family and bad television. Figured I would, in any case, not feel lonelier and more alienated there, where there is Addy, than I do here, where there is, um, nothing comforting but habit and routine. As far as starving student status is concerned, I am not concerned; don't take much to make me happy...
Feel tired.