A few nights ago I met a young guy for coffee, having chatted with him earlier online. He approached me online, not I him, so I thought I was in the driver's seat. I guess I was in some respects, but not entirely. We chatted for a little while about our daily pursuits, the sort of breezy chatter that one forgets immediately, as I have by now, and then he suggested we meet later for coffee. As we were exchanging parting words he asked for my cell phone number because, as he proceeded to explain, when he arrives at the coffee shop, he will park the car and then phone me as to my location in the shop. He didn't seem to like the uncertainty of looking for a stranger. I gave him my number—he was cute enough for that. Then he continued with the following: "When we meet don't say 'Nice to meet you,' 'You look different than your pic,' or 'What was your sc? [screen name, for the uninitiated]'" He didn't want anyone to get the impression that we had met online, which of course we had. Funny that he was concerned about this. Aren't we all, especially the young, as he was (oh, soooo young), comfortably settled into the online world? Why the bashfulness? I replied with something like, "So many rules. I'm stymied by all these rules." I mentioned something about the tests he was putting me through. He said that I had passed them comfortably, though more were to follow. And then something was said about other examinations he’d like to give me. I said there’d be opportunity for those later. Well, we chatted over coffee (or tea for me, and a creamy cold coffee drink for him), and we sat and sat until I (yes, I!) got tired of sitting and suggested we leave. We walked to our cars, having parked on the same side street. I walked him to his, and then, standing by his car, we began the awkward talk that covers the nervousness of two minds wondering whether something is going to happen next. This talk continued endlessly. Ultimately I moved closer to him and kissed him. He kissed me back, and we kissed for a moment or two. We then moved back into more nervous, silly talk. I asked him home, and he coyly said it was not a good idea on a first meeting. He's right, of course. More chatter. I kissed him again, and we kissed a while longer until I told him to go home and do the work that he had earlier mentioned awaited him. It was nice. He was cute. And I liked kissing him on the street. Of course it was dark, but we turned at least a few heads. The only reason I mention it now, for it wasn't my intention to write about it tonight, here at the very same coffee shop... the reason is that as I entered the shop just 45 minutes ago, there he was sitting outside with some other guy. We exchanged some words, and I left him to his friend. I'm not sure if I feel guilty for not having called him, or jealous that he's with his friend. It's silly either way. He was just a fun encounter, perhaps one I'll renew sometime. Enough about that.

I intended to write about my unemployment situation. Yes, I'm unemployed. It's so dull to write about such things. In fact, on second thought, I won't. I’m bored with it before I begin. More Rorem. In 1958 he wrote this: "Often composers compose like what they think they are not. Look at the uncomplicatedly sensitive but basically joyous work of David Diamond during his flagrantly disordered war years, and now that he’s stabilized in a Florentine villa his music's grown knotty, complex, and sad." He's right about the change in Diamond's music from the 1940s to the 1950s, though I'm not sure it's for the reason Rorem cites. It may be nothing but the inevitable change of any good composer. You can't go on composing the same thing. Diamond himself explained that his music grew more chromatic because he felt he had said all that he could in the modal music of the 1940s.

Here’s Rorem on casual sex: "No sex.... I grow confounded by the intimacy of such acts where two bodies strive so tragically to be one, and the empty-stranger post-orgasm abyss. It happened last night: the frenzied pathetic joy of a child before his birthday cake, followed by the tears of abandonment when the last guest is gone. I'm ready for the calm assurance of a single person, the thatched hut, a cabbage batch." I recognize these things. I feel them myself, but the tears of abandonment aren't so bad. I think of Ann, and of our thatched hut. Is that wrong? There IS something to my friend's claim that bisexuals are selfish. Well, I AM selfish, but it seems to be working.

Rorem on getting older: "Yes, now I can see the years and how the past drags like a peacock's tail ever longer which yet erects a luminous fan blowing and hiding and sweeping the traces and helping what might come."