wine and cheap perfume

This past Friday I ventured into Brooklyn to meet up with Nicole and Rene to see a show at BAM, a strange assortment of performers: M-1 from Dead Prez, Arrested Development, and six angry teenage poets. There was this issue, though, of not knowing quite what to do with myself as the array of non-white performers each, in turn, encouraged "all the brothers and sisters in the house" to stand up. Nicole's Peruvianism (i just made that word up) gave her license to not feel weird about it, but both Rene and I were made anxious by the confusing demand. Did they mean ALL the men and women stand up? Did they mean all people of color? Did they mean just the people of African descent?
I wasn't sure, but noticed that the other three white people in the audience had no problem gleefully leaping from their seats upon request and attempting to gyrate their hips to the beat of whatever song was playing. Arrested Development were awe-inspiring. I kid you not. They were so vivacious and animated and lively and all those things kind of mean the same thing but sometimes i feel like i can emphasize my point if i exploit a word via its synonyms.
They had this old guy on stage who did nothing but bop up and town in a traditional African getup (i'm aware that describing something as "traditionally African" sounds ignorant and is comparable to describing something as "Oriental," however, i have no idea what his specific ethnic origin is and he wasn't wearing Western clothes) and this woman who flung her meaty little body all over the stage with such an ecstatic ferocity that I found myself wondering why I didn't often do the same when i dance. I suppose I was so bowled over by them because they were so unabashedly positive, so pretense-free--and simultaneously so un-corny, which is something you rarely see nowadays. They sang and danced and smiled and witnessing it all was genuinely uplifting. My favorite line from the evening was one from one of the teenage poets who said, "We don't need 50 cent-we need change." I thought that was clever. Clever, but more importantly, not a generic anti-Bush rant that all the other poets were compelled to spew over the course of the evening. Afterwards we went to a bar called "Mo's" and talked about the show and Rene said that seeing things like that made him feel like "a good white person." Sometimes I go to things like that and try to convince myself that cause I'm "gay", "Jewish" and having a hard time finding employment, that I'm not really white. I never succeed, but I always give it a go.
On Saturday I met up with Michael at Benny's, where I drank about a keg of Dos Equis on draft (my second new favorite thing, though a distant second to BBC's "The Office," which I watch and talk about with such regularity that I'm freaking myself out) and we discussed his show and grad school and, in his words, "chasing tail." I realized that no one is ever content with anything they have. I mean, I already knew this, but he has the most incredible, meaningful and gratifying career, a perfect girlfriend, and still is frustrated.
I am frustrated, but that has more to do with the fact that I am soul-crushingly bored and have no meaningful job and do nothing worthwhile with my time aside from work out in a sweaty pit of a gym with a bevy of portly middle-aged body-builders. Moreover, I consider that worthwhile.
I vascillate between wanting to be a total homebody who never goes out and bakes things for my beloved and wanting to be one of those cheap floozies who thinks it's cool to dance on tables and have an endless stream of "listen to what i did last night!"-type stories that somehow involve nudity, drugs, sex in seedy places (no pun intended), and something weird, like an old bagel or a sprig of mint. The problem is, I don't think I'm either and I'm having a hard time finding a happy medium.