Plots

"That cunt don't got no need to spend money! Why she spend money! She wasn't spozed to spend no money! Can't believe that cunt!"

-- Young man in a Jack Daniels baseball cap, smoking outside the Campbell County Public Library, KY, talking on a cell phone and watching me enter

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I made it to Cincinnati.

The house I'm in is drab, as sketchy and full of holes as the neighborhood: Hardwood flooring that creaks with each breath, no A/C, the stairway dark and dank as a logger's woolen socks. I just bought a floor fan, a shower curtain, and a bit of freedom today, mashing gas up and down I-75, memorizing exits, feeling more and more like an ant in a dingy, dirty anthill.

The first Cincinnati-ite I observed as I left the exit ramp last night was a Bojanglesy black man with gray hair. He was wearing tattered bits of clothing, straddling a rickety bike on the curb, and yanking/dragging/towing behind him a large lawnmower covered in a purple quilt. He gave me the finger as I passed (me, Asian and gawking, of course), and I thought, My God, what is this place?

Positive slopes: I get my own bathroom, being the sole male in the house (no worries, the ladies are all at least thirty...I think...and as keen and kindly as you'd like). Privacy is prime, complete with a deadbolt and a window opening onto a fire escape, the second level of which is mine, all mine, perfect for late night cigarettes or people-watching. Rear window? I think so: The barrio, as I said, is sketchy (dead-grass lawns, intimidating walks, shale-eyed children darting in and out of rows of parked cars, fat mommas and skinny poppas watching apathetically from the collapsing front stoop of grungy, decaying houses) but it's interesting, too. It may be a week before I stop glancing over my shoulder whenever I walk to my car, but I'll get used to it, I'm sure. The night and the day, and the first day...and it maybe wasn't the greatest, but it was still good.

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Picked up a copy of Blindness in the Dayton Borders because the film trailer looked so damned good. It's translated from the Portugese, so tenses fade from past to present and back again, which slows my pace. But it's good--sexy good.

Had dinner and drinks with McMullen before making the last leg. I look ahead, but see in the rearview mirror the choice I made a few months back. I wish I'd moved to Chicago...

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Work starts Monday. I hit dinner and maybe a flick (there's a shiek indie-film theater about two miles west) with Sara tonight, explore on my own tomorrow, navigate the 'Nati with Tory on Saturday, and perhaps skidoosh out to Columbus on Sunday for the night.

Accomplished: Met the theatre office folk when I picked up my new script; Plotted directions and locations of about a dozen local haunts worth a look-see; Hit up libraries downtown and across the river in KY; Raised my impressionable, whimpering spirits.

Probably, now: Get back "home," nap to dream, read, write, and assemble the room.

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I made it to Cincinnati.