What I'm Reading

[describing the end of a scavenger hunt] I know what my favorite moment of the night is. I ask Matt to tell me his.

"Battery Park," he says. . . .

I might even agree with him had it been during the day. But it was close to four in the morning at that point. Rats were audibly, fearlessly scurrying through the bushes nearby, and mosquitos -- their thoraxes no doubt full to bursting with West Nile virus -- buzzed incessantly about our ears. That was also when Jamie ran into a friend of his. This friend was not part of our game. He was there for other reasons. Gentle reader, I will let you in on something: if you are a gay man strolling of a summer's night through a dark New York City park sometime after 3:30 a.m., there is a reason for it and that reason is not so you will run into someone you know. In fact, the last person you want to run into is someone you know. Let me amend that: the second-to-last person you want to run into is someone you know. The truly very last person you want to run into is someone you know accompanied by dozens of jolly amateur sleuths.

With flashlights.

[and from an article on Fashion week] All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, "What can you write that hasn't been written already?

. . . I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with at that moment is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn't. Also, not yet having undergone his alarming weight loss, and seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin overrisen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, in humane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How's that for groundbreaking, Mr.L.?

When I got to Canada, I could hardly wait to go to Munro's so I could buy David Rakoff's book in the original Canadianese. The above, as you can see, is transcribed word-for-word in that Northern tongue. As much as it pains me to do so -- as so much of the nuance and subtle humor will be lost -- I'll post a translation later for those of you who lack the language skills to read the above as is, as David wrote it and wanted it to be read. I will do it because I care about you, my readers, and want to share wonderful things with you. That said, people, seriously, learn a second language: it opens up the world so much. But I'm digressing, aren't I? Forgive me. My point is, even if you have to read the American release, read Don't Get Too Comfortable. It is worth the effort.

Enjoy.