Instead of burying myself with my usual slew of self-help books, lately I've been reading books on writing: Ann Lamot's Bird by Bird. It's very easy to read and gets the point across. But, like those darn self-help books, there are some familiar themes, like: Just Write. Well, consider this entry today's effort!

The other book I'm reading is a biography of Jack Kerouac. I guess that's not really a book about writing. But this book goes into detail -- exhausting detail -- about Kerouac's writing process.

Alright, I have to admit, I was looking for the gay bits. I heard Kerouac was gay. And even if he wasn't totally gay, he was supposed to get around. Well, this book detailed in the Best of Boring all his conquests. He was married three times, and "put the make" on girls when he was young. Very little gay. There was a single-line reference that Kerouac and two friends went to a bathhouse in the 40s "but Kerouac didn't get into it." No details. Oh well.

Well, I guess it's supposed to be a scholarly work. My dad once said "I don't know if Kerouac was gay, but he had quite a 'thing' for Neal Cassady." Cassady is Kerouac's friend in On The Road and the main character in Visions of Cody.

Here's a summary of the juicy bits involving Cassady: He had a year-long affair with whozits who wrote Howl. I saw the best minds of my generation... yeah, him. And, when Kerouac lived with the Cassadys in San Fran in the early 50s, they shared Cassady's wife.

Maybe it was the writing style, maybe it's 2004, or maybe I'm jaded: These tidbits didn't particularly scintillate me.

What interested me more (and I haven't read the book enough to discover the answer), was why Cassady disappeared from Kerouac's life after about the mid-1950s. What happened? Did their friendship suddenly end, or did they drift away?

Flash back about twenty years: I remember reading On The Road the first time. I wanted to hop in my rusty VW Rabbit; swoosh! down that rising asphalt ribbon to the land of the eternal cowboy, searching for that luscious desert, litting up like bizzing neon.

(OK no more bennies for me!)

Seriously, I had never read anything like it. It was a positive and hopeful book because it was filled with energy and made me look at everything fresh. To me, it symbolized -- and still symbolizes -- what I believe America represents. Or should represent.

Question for visitors to the site: Have you read a book that impacted you that way?

Later, I tried to read Dharma Bums and Visions of Cody, but I didn't get far in either one. Sadly, neither seemed to match that zeal -- irritating, even -- of On The Road.

This past saturday night, I hung out with two new friends of mine. I met E when we began talking about living healthfully: eating right and exercising. He'd gotten hooked on the Body For Life program. I looked through it, but I see it as another form of body fascism involving charts and diet supplements. But, E has followed it faithfully in the last two years to transform himself from a humpty dumpty into a 'metrosexual'.

When I arrived at their house, E and his girlfriend L were decked out in vinyl and leather, and that's when I learned they are into bondage. (They just formed a local leather 'group'.) Aren't there any normal straight people anymore?

We went to an alternative club in downtown Dayton. By "alternative", I mean neo/semi/post-punk/Goth/industrial. Black paint, black lights, and mirrored columns in the upper floors of an old department store. Fog machines, strobe lights. Lots of smoke and very loud, reverberating music. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Dayton has a place like this -- turn on the evening news to see the dispair here -- and then you might as well revel in it!

Maybe I'm a little long in the tooth to be hanging out in a nightclub, a post-punk/goth/industrial one at that. But E and L aren't much younger than me, and besides, it didn't matter. A lot of the playlist was from the 80s, and if it was new, then it sounded like it was from the 80s. Seemed like they played albums of Depeche Mode. Crazywild!

Following a full metal-detector pat-down to get inside, I smelled a clove cigarette and that got my mouth drooling. I don't smoke, but cloves are a guilty -- and rare -- exception. If you've never smoked a clove, they taste spicy and make your mouth and tongue tingle.

I cornered one of E and L's friends -- trussed tightly in a corset and floor-length dress -- and got her last clove in exchange for a drink. Mmm -- heaven! Meanwhile, E and L bubbled about an artist who's coming soon -- someone who uses his body piercings in his 'performances'. I admit, I'm intrigued...

During the evening, I got the vibes. When they asked me what I wanted to do at the end of the night, I said I was tired and drove home. (And that wasn't a lie, I had really cooked it up on the dance floor.)

On the one hand, I thought to myself Carpe Diem if they ask me to 'participate' in something with them. But then I think, where one boundary goes down, another goes up. I want to be friends. And as a friend, the most I could see myself doing is 'cuddling' without necessarily even being sexual. (Ugh! And, I hate cuddling...!) I don't see cuddlebunny and bondage making good bedfellows, do you?

But then I seem to be intimate only with strangers. Who knows. If I'm ever asked, I'll decide then.