--Pat Benatar

I got a bit of sleep, but not really enough, shortly after I got home yesterday, during which time my shirt got even more messed up, as more or less chronicled in yesterday's entry.

I got up again in the middle of the night, then stayed awake until 10:30 or so, finally catching up on this journal in the meantime. I then slept for perhaps two hours, which mostly just had the effect of making me more tired.

Shortly thereafter, the cavalry came in, or, rather, my brother. Who had my rent, and -- Heaven be praised! -- food. He raided the larder back in Far Rockaway, with the help of my mother, bringing me milk, and cashews, and cake, and frozen pizza, and even some pastrami.

Y'know, as much as I complain about 'em, I suppose I oughta count my blessings, when it comes to my family. They're certainly generous...

In addition to this journal, I have a public home page, under my real name. I've barely updated the thing at all over the past couple of years, in fact. I've kept meaning to get around to it, but never have, and I suppose this journal has taken its place for many intents and purposes. On the other hand, for those who know me in general, that's my page.

Anyway, it features some poems I wrote back in high school, a song my father composed, and some other stuff. I'll pass on the URL along to my notify list and my currently-nonexistent (but available) "unnotify list", for people who only want the extra stuff, but not the notifications when I update. All you need to know here is that it includes a factbox with my name, age, height, weight, astrological sign, and other stuff like that. And amongst those is a statistic reading "Sex: Not yet."

So I got this e-mail on Wednesday:

I must say though, since you are a frum yid, you should change the "Sex" on your stats page to say 'Male'. It is better to lose one joke than to make a Chillul Hashem (as defined in Mesilas Yesharim).

A "Chillul Hashem" literally means 'a desecration of The Name,' i.e., God. Which is to say that it's a bad reflection on Judaism in general when one of us misbehaves in public. And Mesilas Yesharim is a classic work on ethics, written in the 18th Century.

Anyway, I e-mailed him back, pointing out that, at worst, the statement implied that I didn't believe in pre-marital sex, and so didn't seem that bad to me. I repressed the urge to suggest that it wasn't as if I'd written "Sex: With multiple partners," or something like that.

And the fact of the matter is, even joking about sex to the extent that I do on my public home page is kinda radical, and I knew it, which is why it almost surprises me that it took about two-and-a-half years for somebody to comment on it.

But just to make things more surreal, this came in while I was in the middle of an e-mail volley with one of the new staffers over at CleanSheets, who seems to be a really neat person, very much on my wavelength. And I'm thinking, if this guy only knew what I'm actually up to...

...well. Perhaps this gives y'all a better idea of just how much blackmail material this journal really contains.