Speaking of alone and bored, it occurred to me recently that I haven’t been on a real date since I broke up with Abigail this summer. Which, as long-standing readers will doubtless note, flies in the face of both prior practice and (admittedly somewhat deserved) reputation.

It’s just that, with so much going on, with so much time spent out of town, with not more than single-week stretches at home since mid-summer, I simply haven’t had the chance to disastrously sleep my way through New York City.

Tragic, I know, and doubtless deleterious to the content of this site. So, spurred on by necessity, I headed back to Nerve, the only dating site I’ve ever used. (And even then, just once – the first email I sent locked a date that kicked off an [uncharacteristically long] seven-month relationship.)

Then, as Nerve has apparently started sucking, I also headed off to JDate (are you happy Mom?) and Consumating (where I has apparently registered a year back when the site was brand new, and had since been tagged ‘beautiful’ and ‘misanthrope’, the second half of which, at least, is probably right).

I’ll therefore, again, shortly be heading out into the fray of New York single life. Wish me luck, and remind me to wear my bean-proof shirt.

[Also: Hi, potential dates who have Google-stalked me back to this site! Don’t worry, I’d never write about you! Okay, that’s not true. But I at least promise I won’t use your name!]

When we were growing up, my brother and I used to joke that, if my father were to die, we would have him made into a fireplace-front rug.

Which is to say, he’s fairly hairy. Apparently, however, that fact eluded him for some time. Famously, shortly after he and my mother were married in their early twenties, when he was already verging on gorilla, the two of them went to Jones Beach with my mother’s sister. As a middle-aged man walked by, my father commented, ‘you know what I think is really gross? Back hair.’ Which led the two ladies to share concerned glances, implying the question, “which one of us has to tell him?”

This seminal story stuck with me for at least two reasons: first, it explicated the dangers of unnoticed back hair, and second, it indicated that, genetically, if I was at risk of looking like Teen Wolf myself, it would likely already have kicked in.

By now, having made it all the way to 26, I think I may finally be in the clear. But, heeding the other lesson of that family story, about once a week, I adjust the mirrored doors of my bathroom cabinets so that one faces the other, allowing me to double-check.

And, if I ever were to find a villous matting, I know my younger brother would come through. Still in his perilous early twenties, he keeps an electrolysist on speed-dial. Just in case.

In the wake of Katrina, I’ve read countless interviews of New Orleans musicians who’ve been called upon nearly nonstop to perform at jazz funerals.†

For those not familiar with the ritual, a jazz funeral begins with musicians accompanying mourners†to graveside, underscoring with slow marches and somber dirges.† The body is ‘cut loose’ from earthly ties, laid peacefully to rest.†

Then, the musicians and mourners raise horns and voices to the heavens, singing the spirit upwards with the raucous music of the French Quarter, of the pubs and dives and dance halls of Storyville.† The musicians and mourners dance in the street and sing and eat and party until they collapse.

As one well-known jazz historian explained, “we celebrate and laugh at life.† So we must celebrate and laugh at death.”

Which, I think, is exactly right.† Or, at least, exactly what I want. When I kick the bucket, don’t give me somber memorials.† Skip the eulogies and quiet tears.† Once I’m in the ground, play and sing and drink and eat.† Party until it hurts.

Sport psychologists often say that a key trait of the best athletes is constant visualization – playing through, in their minds’ eyes, upcoming competitions, again and again, until, when they come to a big event itself, it seems like nothing new.

I, instead, and likely far less helpfully, tend to visualize post-facto. After a conversation, I run it repeatedly in my head, tweaking what I said or what they said, working out more clever responses than I could possibly have generated in that first, in-the-moment pass.

The problem is, recently, somewhere in all of those conversational re-runs, I forget that I’m supposed to be doing them only internally. Mid-conversation, I’ll suddenly say my next line out loud: “Sure, in Kansas,” or “Anybody can option the script.”

It isn’t until the full sentence is out of my mouth, however, that I realize I’ve somehow moved from inner world to outer. Then, guiltily, like someone who trips on a curb and tries to dance it off, I act the next few moments as if it were entirely intentional to have suddenly voiced a non-sequitur, out of nowhere, and to nobody in particular.

And, frankly, it never really works. But, at least, I can replay that recovery, again and again in my head, until I’ve come up with something that would.

By the demands of business and pleasure, I travel frequently. So frequently that, when Jet Blue introduced a rewards program a few years back, I was within the first ten to rack up a free trip.

Having logged enough miles to know first-hand the odds of safely reaching my destination, I should be a calm, collected flier. Instead, I’m increasingly phobic, knowing too well each expected whirr and beep: altitude markers, well-adjusted ailerons, fully-engaged landing gear. During a flight, at least a quarter of my brain is consumed with monitoring such sounds. Was that clang right? And, if not, have the flight attendants huddled in back for last tearful goodbyes?

The other three quarters of my in-flight brain are rarely focused on sleep or actual, productive work – two things I do poorly in general, but particularly so on planes. Instead, I spend my time thinking about the least embarrassing moment to use the bathroom.

Put me in a pressurized cabin, and my bladder suddenly shrinks to the size of a walnut. Or perhaps, due to years of my mother’s admonitions, it’s just that I spend the entire flight sipping away at the giant bottled water I never fail to bring on board. Either way, every twenty minutes, I’m off for a lavatory trip.

These days, I manage to score an aisle seat about 95% of the time, sparing my row-mates from constant climbing. But, even seated aisle-side, I start to worry what my neighbors make of the nonstop in-and-out. By flight’s end, I’m convinced even the flight attendants have taken note, eyeing my aisle-walking as sure sign of terrorist threat.

I bring this all up because, over the past week, I’ve been similarly breaking my day into twenty-minute between-bathroom-break chunks. Since last Sunday, I’ve been sick as a dog. And whenever I’m under the weather, I start peeing like its my job.

All of which is a rather long and diluted [best pun ever!] explanation for my lack of regular posting. I did, however, (in between trips to the loo,) manage to make my way through all of Anne Lamott’s excellent Bird by Bird, which reminded me of how valuable regular, scheduled writing is for staving off post-collegiate atrophy of my (already admittedly meager) grasp of language.

So, even with bladder capacity short of normal, even with my lungs still intermittently attempting to escape my chest via fits of violent, hacking cough, I’m really (for real this time, I’m serious, etc, ) going to shoot for the fabled daily posting pace. While I can always fall back on a stadium pal and liter bottles of Robitussin, if I loose the ability to (at least semi-coherently) share my dumb ideas with the rest of the world, I’ll basically have to shoot myself in the head.

As much as I love bookstores, love strolling through them, reading jacket covers and rifling through pages, I must admit they also make me a bit sad. I’ve taken to writing down promising titles on the trusty binder-clip full of 3×5 cards I carry in my right front pocket, and it doesn’t take me more than ten minutes to cover an entire card, front and back.

The list of books I’d like to read seems endless. My time rarely does. So, looking at those book piles, I always feel a bit wistful, knowing I’ll never have a chance to even skim perfunctorily through most of them.

In my own home, despite cramming quick pages and paragraphs into any otherwise unoccupied stretch of time, I’m faced with a pile of to-be-reads that seems to constantly grow, outpacing my ability to chip through. I institute periods of book-buying moratorium – no more purchases until I’ve made my way through the entire pile! – but my resolve rarely lasts.

Which is how, with at least ten volumes awaiting attention on my top shelf, and four others in various stages of ongoing digest, I found in my mail today an Amazon box full of five new acquisitions. There should be a 12-step plan for this.

I hit Central Park this morning at 9:00am, for [Crossfit’s][] brutal monthly NYC group workout. Afterwards, over brunch at a nearby diner, one fellow athlete asked me what I could possibly use in my hair, to make it spike up stylishly even after an hour or two of sweaty abuse.

[crossfit’s]: http://www.crossfit.com

My answer: nothing. When cut short enough (as it recently was, a few days back), my hair naturally stands up on its own. I do, on occasion, use pommade, but I do it solely to make the spiking look intentional. Even without it, Tintin has nothing on me.

Surveying my mane’s misbegotten past, I realize that it always seems to gravitate, naturally and pre-emptively, to whatever new ‘do is about to come into style. Bowl cut? Rat tail? Floppy eye-covering surfer shag? Yes, yes and yes – each time, my hair simply started self-arranging that way, even before the looks came (regrettably) into broader fashion.

Which, by now, leaves me blissfully zen when it comes to the future life of my locks. Though I’ve fortunately yet to start losing my hair, even if I did, I wouldn’t much worry; at that point, a Male Pattern Baldness craze would no doubt kick in, leaving my shiny pate – naturally, preemptively – in full haute coiffure style.