"Well that didn't go as planned.."

I could never fully trust someone who doesn't love Woody Allen films. I have experimented with giving certain people the benefit of the doubt, but in the end, I just find Woody Allen's movies to be so pee-in-your-pants funny that I become dreadfully uncomfortable by anyone who cannot appreciate at least two of the notable gems (Manhattan, Love & Death, Annie Hall, and my new favorite, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, to name a few). I was recently on a first date with someone when they told me that they found Vicky Cristina to be "prosaic, full of stereotypes, disappointing in terms of the advertised lesbian sex scene, and not very funny."

This fellow was neither the desired level of pimp nor the charmingly flawed mimbo, but his comment about Woody Allen put me off the experience like the site of day-old fish in a restaurant in the Mexico City airport. He will have to do something unexpected to redeem himself from this offense—like confess to his love of the original Brideshead Revisited BBC series with Jeremy Irons, but then, the fellow would probably be gay, and that wouldn't improve matters either.

On a different note—one of unquestioningly good faith: it is the last day of February.

Inherited Chairs

It never rains, it pours. My screenwriting professor went on an extended monologue about the importance of determining "all sorts of ways in which your characters delude themselves." Then he discussed the wide range of people's definitions of "a lot." He asked me what I considered would be "a lot of dates to have had in my lifetime." For some devout Catholics or thirty-year-old virgins, three would be "a lot." For some charming former playboy pimps and mimbos, 812 would be "a normal amount."

I recently saw Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, a shaky but penetrating hand-held glimpse into a repressed Connnecticut family—is there any other kind? Kym (Anne Hathaway) is the explosive and tortured sister returning from her latest stint in rehab, caught in a wave of dysfunctional family dynamics for which she is the trigger. And it all takes place on the festive, and somewhat carnivalesque, occasion of her older sister's wedding.

The film highlighted awkwardly long episodes of the following: a sober rehearsal dinner toast fraught with taboos, a divorced parent logistical mishap, a father vs. son in law dishwasher-loading competition, and a harmless but premeditated woodland car accident. In short—a realistic portrayal of Wasps in action.

Mockeries

One of the most socially and morally detestable things about Yale is its self-important, over-endowed secret society system. The lavish windowless buildings have their own groundskeepers, and their well-decorated underground tombs have their own chefs. Though one of the more architecturally uneventful societies, Skull & Bones is the most "celeb-worthy," boasting John Kerry and George Bush in its ranks (who, incidentally, received impressive straight-C report cards while at Yale). Skull & Bones is so secretive that one of its current members, a flamboyant gay boy, mentioned it in an interview for the "50 Most Beautiful" edition of the gauche collge humor tabloid, The Rumpus. He also gave an explicit account of his ideal alpine tryst with a young red-headed rower—the Old Boy's Club of Skull & Bones has definitely evolved into the twenty-first century.

Skull & Bones has also been in the news recently on account of their alleged theft of some precious items belonging to the famous Apache chieftain, Geronimo. The rumor is that Bush Senior Senior and some of his distinguished college buddies were the culprits who stole, well...quite literally, Geronimo's Skull & Bones.

Personally, it sounds like some gauche initiation rite that George Senior Senior and his entourage would have embarked on in a drunken stupor. If there's any truth to it, all I have to say is, "If you're going to pretend to be creepily obsessed with elaborate mock-Gothic rituals, then at least have the decency to hoard your own remains in your over-priced tombs."

Drifting on Satin Waters

I attended a Yale Pierson College Master's Tea with the previous and reigning Playboy editors. Unfortunately, one of my life's idols, the pimp of the universe (other than Jack Nicholson of course), the man who shares my HH initials, and, like me, prefers to dress exclusively in satin nightwear, Mr. Hugh Hefner, was not in attendance. Incidentally, I also share my initials with Humbert Humbert, of Nabokov's Lolita—when my friend noted the connection, she interjected, "Not to say that I think you're a pedophile," though the HH legacy seems suspect).

The following are some notable tidbits of knowledge that the Playboy editors had to offer vis-à-vis journalism:

[On being a writer in the recession] "There's no better time to want to make a life of writing, observing, and reporting, because things are so bad."

[On libations] "A martini...hmmm, the birth and death of many a great idea."

[On career networking] "When you go out into the world, it's not who you know, it's whom you know... Too bad it's not what you know."

[On working in publishing] "Go to India. There are lots of jobs there."

Blue Finger Nails

Ever since my father forwarded me an article entitled "My Blog Ate My Career," I have been increasingly self-conscious about my lack of good ole New England discretion. He was trying to encourage me to blog under a pseudonym in case potential employers Google my name and discover a proliferation of the term "wanker." Though merely a euphemism for the more reprehensible males I encounter, wanker sets off some alarm bells for my father about my candidacy in corporate America. He fears that I will never be able to get a job in investment banking or a teaching position at a prestigious single-sex Connecticut boarding school, due to my blog's general gaucherie.

I responded with the vim and vigor of someone who sweats under the pangs of censorship: "If employers are put off by my 'risqué' personality, then let them take their narrow-minded attitudes and look for new hires at their local branch of ASH ('Archaic & Servile Headhunting' conglomerate). If they find my blog indecorous, then chances are they'd find the flesh and blood version even more inappropriate.

Life's too short to hide your identity and forsake your right to creative expression out of some vague paranoia about the bar for success prescribed by a bunch old white men. So, in case anyone wants to Google my name, "Hello! My name is Haley Hogan and I'm Addicted to Strangers."

Violence

There is a rainstorm outside that has turned into driving sleet and snow. This morning a seventeen-year-old boy jumped out of an eleventh floor window while at Dalton, his elite Manhattan private school. It occurred during lower school recess. Fourth graders had been playing on the sidewalk out front when the junior boy fell to his death. News reports claim that Dalton teachers "closed all the shades to keep students inside the building from seeing the scene outside."

There are no facts on whether or not it was suicide, but the various shreds of information mention that he was a shining student who won academic awards and was very involved in extra-curriculars. His brother attended Dalton with him.

Due to privacy issues, sufficient details never surface to piece together the tragedy in any coherent way. It remains like a vague expanding blackness. The cursory news articles finish off by elaborating on "the prestigious Dalton school and its famous alumni," moving away from the traumatic event. They read like anxious accounts of a young life cut short in an act of violence too horrifying, or too taboo, to even articulate.

"Read it violently, aggressively."

Jealousy is not necessarily an unproductive human downfall. My preschool nemesis became one of the primary motivating factors in my life: I wanted to have more doll accessories than she did, I wanted to learn to write my name in cursive like she did, and then, years later, I wanted to date her boyfriend, and I wanted our beloved high school English teacher to give me more attention around the Harkness Table.

This former rival became my early academic incentive, but it became tiresome to try to exceed her (especially since she was a star ice hockey player, and I have never been fond of team sports, or cold air). My jealousy turned into an unshakable desire to be different from her. In boarding school, this impulse led me down many a wayward path—jumping in ponds late at night with underclassman boys, writing poetry, dressing exclusively in orange velour jumpsuits, directing French experimentalist theatre productions, and occasionally wearing wigs.

But in the end, I would never take back this rivalry. We are now close friends, and I admire her for her early acceptance to Harvard Business School, her charming boyfriend, and her varsity women's ice hockey scores. Because, just two hours south of Cambridge, in the delightfully underrated city of New Haven, I have many brilliant things of my own—an unedited (and probably unpublishable) manuscript, a gay boyfriend named "Poodle," and an aversion to overly strenuous physical activity.

Pigeon-Fanciers

The new Charles Darwin exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art is Entitled "Endless forms": Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts. It includes everything from pigeon skulls, to Cézanne paintings, to a seven-minute looped video of pheasants mating. The visiting curator from London, with her lovely nest of salt-and-pepper hair, kicky tweed dress and leather boots, told the touring students, in her most deadpan British manner, with regard to the pheasant footage: "If you're waiting for the climax, there isn't one. It's seven minutes of very elaborate courtship."

A rotund fellow interrupted our tour to add his insight on scientific theories of artistic vision. He was wearing an odd combination of pinstripe suit, leather suspenders, linen shirt, and backpack, and his intervention was delightfully disruptive.

My friend and I had the odd fortune of encountered this interloper the very next day, at the New Haven hot spot tapas restaurant, Barcelona. He was wearing almost the exact same outfit, and his unconventional charms abounded. We joined him for tequila and late-night professorial chit chat at the home of his friend, a member of the university faculty.

But back to the British: in his old age, Darwin became a "pigeon-fancier," which means that he was "not at all snobby."

Good on Paper

My Valentine is incredibly handsome, tall, masculine, devilishly intelligent, with a touch of sardonic wit about him. Thanks to his decidedly pimp status, he manages to wear brown suede slippers at all hours of the day, in all seasons, and still look impeccable.

Late tonight I am taking him to dinner at my favorite restaurant, and then on to the Anchor Bar, a New Haven classic (with a gold neon anchor-shaped sign and a changing window display that incorporates various plastic dolls—in short, very David Lynch).

My Valentine and I share just about everything, or at least all the important stuff: a love of Paris, a fondness for brief trips to Cambodia, a taste for queer theory and the "problematic male gaze," and a fascination with older men with big art collections.

Jealous?

Long Engagements/Speedy Handshakes

In The New York Times review of the new production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya that premiered last night in Manhattan, the Russian characters are described as frenetic and "hands-on — grasping, clasping, cuffing and massaging one another." Touching, most often considered a form of intimacy or tenderness, is actually a sign of aggressiveness that constructs power dynamics between 'the toucher' and 'the touched.'

In the words of the reviewer, the constantly-in-contact Chekhov actors seem "determined to show they can still get in touch with themselves by touching others." The Uncle Vanya cast includes movie stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard. In real life, they have been engaged for three years and live together with their son in Park Slope as unmarried "partners." They seem uncommonly happy and successful.

Maybe shaking hands and hugging are grossly misinterpreted ways of displaying authority, and maybe marriage is overrated. During my pre-Valentine's Day anthropological research last night, I crashed "Graduate Student Speed Dating." Clammy handshakes abounded.

An Eye Patch

"On the eve of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday," tonight's Yale Center for British Art keynote lecture was accompanied by wine, sausage tartlets, and inordinately opportune people-watching: elderly women in fur, young men in lime green ponchos, tweeds and plaids mixed in combinations both horrifying and delightful, and the usual rarefied debauchery of art world academia.

With Darwin's theories on evolution always pertinent to my own observations of human sexuality, and with Valentine's Day looming, here are some of the more egregious post-breakup mating rituals.

Gauche Things to do to an Ex:

1. After months apart, emailing your ex to suggest a friendly drink. Then, after he/she refuses, sending the following email response: "No problem. Just a bit of leftover curiosity." Classic wanker behavior.

2. G-chatting your ex, or contacting them via any form of simultaneous cyberspace messaging. If you have something specific to say, express it in a hand-written letter...you will inevitably change your mind about sending it, due to the letter's inappropriately aggressive or spiteful tone. You'll be grateful to have not humiliated yourself by way of as lowly a form of communication as Gchat.

3. Calling your ex in the middle of the night, especially with the idea of initiating phone sex. Need I say more?

Pre-Professional

I often convince myself that certain typically un-me life prospects are just what I need in my life. I began last week inspired to do Teach For America. Given my fascination with wankers, pimps, society portraiture, the postwar jet set, and all things Parisian, Teach For America seemed like a natural career move. By Thursday, I had come to my senses and decided that "being a warm body in front of a classroom" in the Mississippi Delta was not actually my cup of tea. The London Consortium, a graduate program in Cultural Studies and Humanities seemed like a more appropriate next step. When I looked at the website, Brigitte Bardot's face was the first image that popped up, and I took it as a sign from God that I should apply.

I recently convinced myself that I should become an opinions columnist for The Yale Herald. With two articles already published, my narrative style seems to be a bit much for the content-light, thesis-heavy taste of the editors. They rejected my last article, claiming that "the thesis was rather obvious." They suggested I re-write it with a new thesis (of their choice) which I found just as "rather obvious" as the first.

Ever since my days at "The Barn Cooperative Nursery School," where I would show up for costume day dressed as a teal-transvestite-sequined mermaid, I have felt like a round peg in a square hole.

Meet Me at the Tower.

Valentine's Day is approaching, a reality that is almost as undesirable as the mid-winter weather. In an attempt to distract myself, I hosted a gathering of friends in my charming dorm room overlooking the glowing Harkness Tower and a snow-covered Cross Campus. A crew of underclassmen boys showed up, most of them involved in theatre, and all of them on the verge of coming out of the closet. At Yale, we refer to the abrupt transition from straight-to-gay as "The Sophomore Surprise."

One of my many romantic shortcomings has been falling in love with gay men. They tend to be clean, witty, well-dressed, and, as my waiter described the venison stew last night, "lean and fun." I even hosted the dorm room fête in celebration of my favorite gay boy's recent admittance to graduate school in London. Accordingly, I bought him a box of Cadbury Fingers, the classic U.K. chocolate biscuits that are so dreadfully named. I suppose I should attend "Graduate Student Speed Dating" night, or go to the biweekly booze-and-romp fests at the sticky-floored, aptly named Toad's of New Haven. I suppose I'm not making great strides towards a happy Valentine's Day by staying in my dorm room with a box of Fingers and a crowd of adorable gay guys.

"watching tv on a cold nyc night"

On the surface, Nicholas Ray's 1956 film Rebel Without A Cause is postwar American conservatism mixed with a typical high school coming of age plot. James Dean is simply beyond: a true boy-man with guts and swagger. Just below the surface, the movie has a terrifying moral: "We all become our parents." The Oedipal and Electra complexes abound: James Dean's character takes a long gulp from a suggestive milk jar that stands in for his mother's breast; Natalie Wood's character, the ultimate in fertile girlish beauty, spends the first twenty minutes of the movie desperate for her father to give her a kiss and approve of her makeup.

Not to mention the obvious homoerotic tensions brought on by Plato, the disgruntled youngster who idolizes James Dean (Plato is aptly named for a certain Greek philosopher given to boy love). My professor blurted out that if 1950s film critics and moviegoers had been privy to this subtext (the familial incest, the homosexuality, the probable child molestation), "They would have created a super black list just for Nicholas Ray."

The above picture is of a Masquerade Headdress in the Yale University Art Gallery's African wing. It is described as possessing "fierce" and "fancy" aesthetics. It seems as traumatized by its parents as James Dean's character, so it consoles itself with plastic daisies.

The Shock of the New

How does one get rid of the memory of a lover? There is the inevitable period of apathy and convalescence. Respite is the appropriate word for this phase, as it means "a period of temporary delay" and relates to some Latin word for "looking back." Personally, "staring back morbidly" would be a more apt description of this post-relationship respite. Remaining in bed and watching re-runs of early '90s sitcoms and reading Sylvia Plath's Ariel are key factors in the respites of my life.

I dated a man this summer in Manhattan who ended up being part-wanker part-mimbo (a deadly combination). Maybe he simply filled a momentary void in my life. And maybe he was just a faint version of another person I've loved. Maybe we are all just living in Hitchcock's Vertigo and destined to make the same mistake twice.

Some people say I should delete him from my phone, ignore his calls, throw myself into my work, and realize that I only miss the idea of him. But something tells me that a respite only ends when there is a bright new Madeleine Elster in one's life.

You're a Lovely CV

I recently attended the MIT European Career Fair to interview for a position at a big international insurance company. I was seduced into it by the following facts:

a. They read my résumé (with its use of dreadfully uncorporate phrases like "one act plays," "au pair," "beauty assistant," "Teen Vogue")... and they were still interested in interviewing me.

b. Their company is based in Switzerland. That means: Swiss men strolling on the banks of lakes, ski outfits that are elegant instead of awkwardly puffy, and a general standard of cleanliness that makes France seem almost barbaric in comparison.

I dressed for the interview in the only things I could find that were remotely appropriate: a pair of fake reading glasses, a crisp white oxford button down, and an oversized beige Tod's shoulder bag. I looked comedic.

My interviewer said, as he glanced at my 'artful' CV: "So it looks like you've done all the fun stuff, and now you're looking to get serious." I don't know what he's referring to in terms of "fun stuff," as I am currently buried under a pile of art history articles with titles like "The Panoramic Landscape of Human Suffering" and "Fall of Icarus: Ovid or Solomon?"

Maybe I am indeed "looking to get serious." Or, maybe I'm just looking to become a mastermind performance artist disguised as a lesbian insurance CEO. Here's hoping.

The above picture is of the most campy-erotic corkscrew opener in history. Or maybe it's just designed for Easter Sunday or something.

Flustered Loafers

A useful term for describing men who lack a certain competence and masculine authority is mimbo. It stands for "male bimbo."

The mimbo is the guy who is unable to navigate his big shiny car through the roads of a familiar small town without using his navigation system (and is then unable to work the navigation system, and then drives around in circles thinking he is heading in the right direction). The mimbo is the guy who gets flustered in airport security and accidentally sets off all sorts of alarms while putting his loafers back on. The mimbo is the guy who makes a reservation for a romantic dinner, but books it at Percy instead of Per Se (the former being a "Boston Style Jerk Restaurant" in Queens, the latter being Manhattan's finest French dining venue).

Mimbos are the opposite of pimps; pimps being those who manage to know just what to do in most any situation, and who manage to do it with coolness and style, and maybe even while sporting some sort of gold ring and smoking a cigar. A good cinematic example of a pimp is Jack Nicholson. A good cinematic example of a mimbo is Steve Martin, though I love him dearly. That is the problem with mimbos—they often manage to seduce girls with their charms or good looks. The mimbo is a thoroughly modern incarnation, a product of handheld devices and hypermedia that simply overwhelm the delicate capacities of certain male brains. The utter incompetence of the mimbo would have never been supported in the 1950s. Mimbos are not necessarily wankers, but the two are definitely not mutually exclusive.

4:18 in the Morning

Famous German filmmaker Werner Herzog once said, "It's not self-destructive to jump into a cactus...it's just having a little fun."

I feel as though no matter the volume of interesting and productive work in my life, no matter the number of encounters with exciting people, no matter the proliferation of beautiful settings, at the end of the day, if you don’t have that one special thing that makes you feel good in a bad way, it can all seem useless. For some people it’s alcohol. For some people it’s drugs. For some people it’s degrading or wonky sexual perversions. For some people it’s eating disorders. For some people it’s compulsive spending. For some people it’s masochism. For some people it’s plastic surgery. The list goes on.

Maybe February is giving me this resigned feeling about life. February, with its Valentines, it's unforeseen snow storms, and it's dark late-night phone calls. I should tell whomever is reading this blog: don't resort to "good in a bad way" behaviors, stay strong, buy a sunlamp to stave off midwinter depression, take up a creative hobby, make a film, write in a journal, but I'm not a middle school teacher (yet), and sometimes it's okay to embrace the darkness.