Restless

[muckefuck]

I haven't been getting enough sleep lately. I know, who has? But I know I've exceeded some tacit limit due to the fact that I overslept by an hour this morning. Then, thinking about it, it seemed to me I've only had one or two really solid nights' sleep in the past two weeks or so. Obviously, I've had plenty of chances to sleep in, so I've come to the conclusion that this is something I'm doing to myself deliberately but unconsciously. If I go through every day in a stupor, I'm less likely to get bent out of shape by stupid things.

Lately, that's mostly meant the whole house-buying process. Last Friday, after monshu and I got our loan approval, he crowed that we were finally done. "We're never done," I reminded him. "There's always something else." True to my namesake before me, I saw my words incarnated on Monday when we had to deal with the inclusion of a contingency that we specifically asked be left out. But now work is getting in on the act, too. Monday's revelation that I was going to have less available labour for the coming month or so was the cue for several departments to suddenly inform me that they had projects for me to do. It's all far less stress than many people have to deal with, but any amount is a lot when you've specifically arranged your life in order to minimise such fuss.

At least I've been having some fun. The proximate cause of my oversleeping was Ethiopian Diamond at 8 o'clock, which predictably kept me up past midnight. That was supposed to be Mama Desta's at 6:30 or so, but unforeseen difficulties (primarily the fact that they're not open on Tuesdays) forced a change of venue and corresponding slippage of schedule. I could always have settled for a less spicy cuisine, of course, but I promised an out-of-towner his first Ethiopian and I intended to deliver.

I can't remember if I posted at the time about the cuddly Beiruti I met at Bear Pride, but he's in town for a few days (at this point, for only a few more hours) staying with a mutual friend who lives in monshu's very-soon-to-be-ex building. Said friend had a previous engagement last night, so I promised to take al-Finīqī under my wing. When I called him, he was browsing the Brown Elephant, so I met him at North End and wandered Lakeview for a bit before hopping the El to Granville.

He was especially taken with the injera, which was a relief, because it tends to be the make-it-or-break-it component as far as enjoying Ethiopian goes. Either the prospect of picking up morsels with spongy sour bread gives you shivers of delight or it becomes a barrier you just can't surmount. All through the meal, he was telling me what Levantine food a particular dish reminded him of.

Afterwards, we walked the calories off along the Lake. He insisted on going up to the water simply to touch it. It was a reasonably pleasant night--cool, if a bit humid--but the best part was how easily the talk flowed. We exchanged tales of our early sexual experiences and he filed me in on his backstory as we looped down the shore and back to where he was staying. There, our buddy disputed the fact that he was "Phoenician" ("They were from...Babel or someplace!") and al-Finīqī responded by telling him how the Phoenicians had invented not only seafaring but also language and colour[*]. "And time, too," I added. "Before the Phoenicians came along, everything was static. Oh, and they invented gravity."

I hope everything works out for him. He's got the usual bullshit that goes along with being a long-term foreign resident in addition to the whole Arab-in-America thing and he's just now coming out of a LTR. If he lived in Chicago, he probably be another of the half-broken gay men that my neighbourhood seems to be a clearinghouse for. As it is, he's just another reminder for me to see how my problems really aren't.


[*] Read "the alphabet" and "commercial dyes".