2001-10-29 - 2:08 p.m.

I haven�t been writing lately; I�m sorry. No ideas come into my head, so I don�t even bother to try typing. But I forget that once I start, the words come from nowhere, and if I write long enough, eventually I have something that I don�t mind posting. Or maybe I�m just saving up my words. John has convinced me to do NaNoWriMo, in which you write a novel in a month. I�m also training for the Motorola Marathon. Somehow, these two goals seem at odds with each other. I can only imagine that writing 50,000 words in one month will entail a lot of late nights at Spider House, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and huddling over the glow of a laptop computer. Training for a marathon is�well, exactly the opposite. Going to bed early. Eating healthily. Not drinking. Not smoking. Short runs four times a week. Long runs on Saturdays. Falling asleep on Saturday afternoons in front of the radio. Voracious hunger. Sore muscles.

So we�ll see how the month goes.

Gary has a lesbian girlfriend. She�s 22 years old. I met her for the first time on Tuesday, at the Strokes show at Stubb�s. I knew I was going to meet her eventually, and I was dreading it. I wanted to get it over with; I didn�t want to run into them unexpectedly. I wanted to be surrounded by my friends, in a situation under my control. The Strokes show was packed (incidentally, paying $15 to hear 11 songs, the same 11 songs on their one cd, no matter how technically proficient or hipster beautiful you are on stage, is highway robbery), but I spotted them five minutes after arriving. Gary grinned sheepishly at me. I waltzed right over, and was charming and cool and composed. I chatted. I asked questions. We talked about the bands. The lesbian girlfriend and I made fun of Gary. Gary talked too much. And then I went back to my friends. It was all relatively painless. I wasn�t attracted to her, as I was worried I might be. In fact, I didn�t even form much of an opinion about her, except that her eyes were too big and round for the angles in her face. I don�t envy either of them. She�s very young. And Gary is very difficult.

I later complained to Jennifer that it would be easier to be friends with Gary if he weren�t such an asshole around me. Jennifer said, have you ever thought that Gary has always been an asshole, and you just didn�t notice it until now?

I went to a Halloween party on Saturday night. I dressed all in black, and wore cat ears. I told everyone I was a Black Panther. Some people got the joke. Others didn�t. Grant dressed up as a beauty contest winner; the banner across his chest read �Miss Guided Missile.� Gary and his lesbian girlfriend were there. I didn�t talk to them; at times it felt like we were circling each other, avoiding eye contact, wondering who was going to dive in for the kill. Neither of us did. I talked to Rob and John a lot. Danced to stay warm. Went home alone.

Rob and I carved pumpkins on Sunday afternoon, after kickball. We wanted to do something fun, after the stress of the previous evening. The pumpkins were two for $5 at HEB, and piled high in huge boxes. Rob is a meticulous pumpkin carver, carefully scraping all the pulp from the inside, each knife stroke making a perfect curve in the rind. My pumpkin is more matter of fact, and has a crooked smile. We listened to The Clash and Ben Folds Five. We sang along, and traded pumpkin stories. When we were finished, I said we should be proud of ourselves for creating something. Or destroying something, Rob said.

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