I've been reading Jonathan Ames lately, who is wonderful. He's a novelist and former NY Press columnist (as well as a Gear columnist, but I don't know if that's anything to shout about), and he also does a ton of performing. He tends to write about what he calls his sexual perversions, but really, of course, he's writing about the human condition, especially the one particular to New York City.

And his perversions. Did I mention he's pervy? Man.

He's obsessed with prostitutes, both of the straight and tranny variety, and breasts and fucking and young women and men who will hit on him even though he is straight, and falling in love, he seems to fall in love quite a bit. This is what makes him like the rest of us, this falling in love part. And even the pervy stuff, maybe not the exact details, but the way he sniffs it out like a dog looking for a crotch, over and over and over again. How does he find his way into such trouble? We all do it. When we know what we like, we know what we like.

I was thinking this weekend that it would be nice if I could turn off the flirty, sexy part of my brain at will, but it never seems to work that way. I need to be occupied with something to forget I have a vagina. If I go out on the town, nine times out of ten, I'm going to look to see if there are cute boys in the room, and if there are, I will check them out, and make eye contact with them, and sometimes talk to them, and occasionally, something more will happen.

This is an enormous waste of time. You will never find love in a bar. Well, I will never find love in a bar. This much I know. I can find flirtation in a bar, free drinks, and maybe even sex, but love? True love that will carry me through the night and the next day and weeks and months and years? Not. In. A. Bar.

So I am thinking just focus, Jami, on anything but this waste of time. Talk to your friends. Think about writing. Listen to the music. Have existential thoughts. Check out the guy at nine o'clock, the one with that hair. It hasn't been washed today. And he's got those smart guy glasses, and a paperback of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man in his back pocket. And Converse high tops.

See? The vagina gets in the way. It's not like the penis getting in the way. The penis is all about breasts and eyes and lips and ass and thinking about fucking. Sorry Mr. Ames, you've ruined it for your fellow men. (Oh all right, it wasn't just you.) We always knew you just wanted to fuck us, even if it's in a really interesting way and you'll talk to us about books for an hour first.

The vagina is about what he's thinking, what he's reading, what he's wearing, what he looks like he could become someday, and where he looks like he's been. The vagina can be about immediate gratification, but it is also keenly aware of repercussions.

Now to be fair, men are capable of so much more than the credit I am giving them. I am describing them as superficial sex-obsessed bastards. That's simply not the case for the majority of them, as long as they know how to use their brain in tandem with the penis, which many of them have been taught to do by smart and charitable people in their lives. But they have to put in a little more effort to overcome the single-mindedness of the penis, whereas our vaginas operate with a direct link to the brain for the most part.

Lucky, lucky us.

I was in my corner deli the other day buying a Gatorade after a bike ride. It is commonly known that I have a tremendous ass, large and high, but it is also commonly known that I can be a good conversationalist, and I have been told I look like "a smart girl." There was a guy standing at the counter, and he elected to start up a conversation with me. Which one of my features do you think he chose to focus on?

"What's going on baby girl?"

"Nothing."

"You smoke weed?"

"No."

"Do cocaine?"

"No. I am an entirely wholesome individual."

I turned and walked out the store, and as I left, he said, admiringly:

"Aw girl, look at your big fat ass!"

This happens to me constantly. I still love my ass, though, and wouldn't trade it for any other ass in the world.

Anyway, the other night I was at North Six seeing the really great band The Hold Steady, and it had somehow worked out that there were a ton of people there I knew, some of whom had shown up solo and knew only a few people, or none at all. My Cruise Director instincts kicked in and I spent most of the night bouncing from person to person, trying to entertain and occupy people.

And at the end of the night I realized, I hadn't flirted, hadn't made eye contact, hadn't envisioned any potential romance (and the corresponding devastating breakup) with a complete stranger, not once. I couldn't figure out if I had had fun or not, if my evening was complete without the nudge of potential. I mean, sure I had laughed, I had enjoyed the music, I had drank, I had caught up with old friends, and had met some new people. But the vagina remained untended to, lonely in the bottom of my button-fly Levis.

I hadn't missed a thing. But I hope this isn't any indicator of my future. The vagina is a terrible thing to waste.

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