The other day at work I sat beside a woman I had never seen before. I had an immediate and negative reaction against her. She was a woman of perhaps 50, poorly dressed in jeans and a t-shirt of some kind covered by a larger frock which she would take off when she got warm. Her hair was draped from her head like a clump of tangled weeds pulled from the field by earth and roots--long, unstyled strands of dark hair which was beginning to gray, still wet from her morning shower. She was overweight, but not greatly overweight, with much of her extra weight gathered around her lower abdomen and hips. With a gruff voice signaling a cigarette habit, she spoke on the phone to women friends regarding a mix of work concerns and personal matters, and then turned to visit web sites which she probably read each morning. I don’t know exactly what I didn’t like about her. Maybe it was that I put her so easily into the category of women, single and proudly independent, who are unconcerned about their appearance and the impressions of others, and who have settled into a life without challenge. But it was unfair. Later in the day I spoke with her, and we shared stories about gyms, workout routines, and road trips across New York, and I liked her. But I think what made her likable to me finally was her concern for her extra weight and her waning workout effort.

Then earlier this week I was at a coffee shop and two women sat down at a table beside me. One was a younger woman of about 35 years old, significantly overweight and dressed in a brown business suit, all put together and ready for the office. She was married. The other was older, perhaps 50, and also dressed for the office, though without the power persona. The younger woman prattled on about office politics—clashes with colleagues at meetings, mentoring strategies and interpersonal dynamics with her manager—this while the other listened dutifully, and apparently with interest. As they were leaving the older woman had a chance to mention that she was undergoing training to be a “life coach.” Again I felt instant contempt for these women. I think it was their self-assuredness. Maybe it was what I perceived to be a shallowness? But I wondered if I found women less sympathetic in some ways than men.

There may be something to that, but then later that same day, more antagonism, but this time the target was a man. I visited the Wegmans grocery store in Pittsford, with all its well-feed, well-behaved, well-educated citizenry, those people who listen attentively to public radio in the morning, chat on the phone with friends as they hold the phone with their shoulder and grip a cup of coffee with both hands, who shuttle their kids to hockey practice in the evening and fuss about property taxes in bed with their spouses. I don’t tend to like these people in the abstract either. I saw a thin middle-aged man in jeans and sleeveless fleece vest pull his minivan into a spot beside me. His nervous young girls hopped out and raced to keep up with their humorless father, striding all-too purposefully to the store entrance. There’s no reason I should dislike these people, yet everywhere I turn, I see nothing but people I don’t like. I’m sure I’d like them if I got to know them, but for now, I don’t like these people. I’m not filled with the milk of human kindness. I’ve become a grumpy old man, I’m afraid. Maybe I just don’t like strangers.

I received my Cocteau lithograph today. Now I want to receive such a package every day.

I simply cannot stop picking at my hands, running the finger tips of one hand over the ends of my fingers on the other, over the calluses on the palms and around the thumbs, looking for raised edges, the flakes of dried skin, any unevenness that might be smoothened by removing skin. I like the smoothness of new skin, and the dull pain at the fingertips, the repetitive rubbing of one finger over the cuticle of the next. The sensation of a raised cuticle is irresistible. I want the demarcations of skin and nail to be sharp. There mustn’t be excess skin, yet there is. On the insides of my cheeks too. Once started, I cannot stop biting the insides of my cheeks until I’m satisfied that there is no more excess to be removed. I enjoy biting a bit of cheek and feeling the loose strand with my tongue, maybe even feeling the hallow center of a loop of cheek skin that I can feel with the tip of my tongue.

Today at the gym I was sitting at the preacher curl rack minding my own business when a guy (a complete stranger) on the cables machine turned to me and asked, “Have you ever seen the movie ‘Dodge Ball’?” I had, so I said so. Then he said, “Doesn’t that guy getting a drink at the fountain look like the Ben Stiller character?” He did, dressed in black gym pantaloons with gray tiger stripes, shiny new cross-training shoes, and a gray turtle neck long sleeve shirt which clung tightly to his torso to accent a chest that did not warrant attention. The look wouldn’t have brought to mind Ben Stiller, though, except for the bushy handlebar mustache grown to the edge of his lower jaw as if he’d just pulled his mouth away from a bowl of thick Indian ink. It was completely inappropriate to point and laugh at this guy’s appearance, except that it *was* funny, and he *did* look like the very caricature of a middle-aged man enamored of his macho persona, drawn to his own image in the mirrors and to the attention he imagines he draws from the young women in the gym. Understand this: You’re never quite what you seem to yourself in the mirror, good or bad. Well, I laughed almost reflexively with the guy poking fun at the mustached man, of course unbeknownst him, as I always embrace the feeling of being invited to partake in a private joke. I felt guilty about it, but a big handlebar mustache … Come on.

I’ve finished two books in the last couple of days—“The Married Man” by Edmund White, and Proust’s “Sodom and Gomorrah.” I’ve just moved onto “The Captive,” the 5th volume of Proust’s 7-volume masterpiece. I enjoy how Proust begins and ends the volumes. So little actually happens throughout the hundreds of pages of any volume, the events being almost inconsequential. The transitions between volumes could almost pass unnoticed by the reader except for the need to shift to a different book, new binding with a new cover. The reader is given little assistance in becoming reacquainting with characters or situations. Things simply carry on. But each ending does attempt to set the tone or theme for the new volume. And each beginning is structured with a deliberateness, setting a theme which Proust hopes to explore in the volume. But the tone of the beginning, the well-intended discipline, quickly dissipates as the reader scrambles to assemble in some order the cast of characters and the sequence of events. Proust slides comfortably back into his familiar discourse on man’s place in French society, on art and on the culture of the beautiful, all expounded by the disembodied omniscience of the narrator. It’s funny how the narrator seems somehow larger than the young man at the center of the novels.

The Edmund White novel I just finished was good, but I thought if it had a flaw, it was that the narrator at times seemed to be Austin himself, the main character, or at least the narrator should have been Austin. A shifting third person / first person thing going on at times. Maybe it was just me.

Lately I’ve been out of work. Every day I worry about my next job, worry about what I should do. Yet I can’t bear to begin looking. I despise job searches. I don’t want to face the consequences of a new job. I would rather chat online. I start at the computer with good intentions, but it’s not long before I begin a dialog with some guy, hoping for some lanky boy with a sweaty crotch. Those boys are elusive. I don’t really mind. I do mind not working.