Hey all -- just a quick update before I hit the sack. Been well? Hope so.

On Saturday night I ventured back to that DC goth club to check out a performance by Martiya Possession, a gothic bellydancing troupe. Not bad -- they were great dancers! -- but I think maybe I was expecting something else. Like given that bellydancing supposedly has all of these connections to fertility rites and whatnot, I think I was expecting to be aroused! I wasn't. But then, maybe I was too drunk for that, seeing as how I actually slumped over and fell asleep right there at the bar just after finishing my turkey burger. (I was kinda hungry, but I think I ordered it more for the novelty of eating a turkey burger in a goth bar on the night of a bellydancing performance.) Really -- I was fucking gone. But that's what I get for drinking with my dad before going!

So yeah, I hung out with my dad some too, given that it was Father's Day weekend and all. And I scaled and swung over a fence, just like I used to do when I was a kid! Except I was sober back then. Anyway, good times.

Today, I finished reading The Immoralist by Andre Gide. It was okay, but I think it lied to me when it claimed to be the unabridged version. In addition to the introduction actually admitting that certain parts of the original text had been excised, there were certain things that I was led to believe happened in the book that never actually happened -- but then, I wonder if those parts were ever there to begin with. At any rate, for a book called The Immoralist, it was pretty fucking tame. From the blurb on the back and certain sentences in the introduction, I was expecting Michel to have sex with Arab boys and curse his wife and maybe even kill people -- I was expecting Dorian Gray -- but there was none of that. He just kind of snuck out at night to hang out in bars, and once he gave a dude a chaste but flirty kiss. Anyway, it was short -- not even 100 pages -- but I can summarize it in one sentence. Dude got tuberculosis, was nursed to health by his wife, cultivated a love of vice (that wasn't really all that vicious at all), and went on in this manner nightly while, by day, taking care of his wife, who subsequently contracted tuberculosis and died. And here I was expecting to read about sex with Arab boys! I was actually disappointed.

I may have to read The Picture of Dorian Gray again in the near future.

Anyway, I started reading Caren Lissner's Staring From Square Two immediately after finishing with The Immoralist and am about a sixth of the way into that. It's good so far, but it makes me feel like a weirdo because I don't get off on a single thing listed in the so-called guy canon of films/TV shows. Just kidding! It doesn't take a book to make me feel like a weirdo. 😛

There's probably more to say, but I've gotta get to sleep. Ja!