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Friday, 20 April 2007 (baby's got the bends) 7:45am Got to work, started feeling sick. Pneumonia-flashback, "not sure I'll survive a taxi ride home without hurling"-sick. This is scary. 8:22am On my way home in a taxi. No way in hell I'm risking Muni right now.
Two theories. 1) Bad gyro. 2) My heartsickness is spreading to the rest of my body.
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Thursday, 19 April 2007 (clearer now) 9:45am I'd had plans to work at Sadie's, but thanks to the second week of Muni snafuishness, I didn't make it home—or at least back to my car—until nine. The energy to turn around and leave again just wasn't there. Actually got to bed by half past eleven, which is quite early for me these days. 6:04pm Mmm. Pre-Stooges gyro.
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Wednesday, 18 April 2007 (in a world so white) 3:22pm The headline of the San Francisco Chronicle today: A NATION ASKS WHY. God, I hate it when they try to lump me in like that. I am not asking why, because there's no damned point. The answer, as always, is a resounding because. (Though my fellow Gen-X'ers may recall that such questions are best countered with the highly zen response why ask why? try bud dry! We'll give those old-timers a run for the "Greatest Generation" label yet.) The fact of the matter is, I just don't care, and as usual, I'm not praying for anyone. Because, well, I don't pray for anyone. Not even myself.
Something I do care about, which makes me happy to work where I do: NakedSword is premiering Gaytanamo this Friday, the same day it's released on DVD. This is quite a coup, from what I undersand. The movie's super-controversial in some circles, as is obvious from the title. Poor taste? Yes, probably. As offensive as makig fun of The Passion of the Christ, some would say. Sure to be a big hit? No doubt. I'd slap it right up on Sherilyn's Grindhouse if I could.
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Tuesday, 17 April 2007 (caring to show) 11:14am My Power Exchange article is live on the Eros Zine. I'm glad the caption joke survived. 6:22pm This is what happened. I left work at half past four on Friday to get to a meeting with the Pride Sunday people at the Center at half past five. It's a walk I've made before, but never with my laptop in my bag, so I was a tad more winded than usual. Thankfully, I seem to be on schedule, even though I don't have the whole damn thing planned yet. (I do, however, have the triumphant return of Tribe 8, which almost makes the whole thing seem worth the effort right there.) I smiled and nodded a lot, looking at the the printed spreadsheets of equipment costs, items with arcane abbreviated names and high prices. Very high prices, indeed. Really need to schedule a fundraiser or three at the Dark Room, or something. I'm sure that's when I'd really lock horns with the Trans March people, though. Man. Never thought I'd end up on this side of the debate. Vash had gotten off work early, and after considering going to the Black Light District to keep Perdita company, she wound up at the Stonestown Mall, as she had a Macy's gift certificate burning a hole in her pocket. When we hooked up at the Three Dollar Bill Cafe after my meeting, she showed me what she got: a really frackin' beautiful choker necklace for me. Though we had no feature, the Queer Open Mic had a good-sized crowd, including a peculiar convergence I've never experienced before: Vash, Maddy, Johanna and Zuki were all there. That's my primary partner, my ex-wife, a girl I've sorta kinda started to date, and a girl whom I played with at The Power Exchange but with whom I'm otherwise firmly in the "just friends" category. Unlike the others, though, it was Zuki's first time at the Queer Open Mic, or reading in public at all, and I was more than a little honored that she decided to do it at my event. In early February, a certain grumpy guy read at the Queer Open Mic. More accurately, he'd tried to, but never quite got to it. First he balked at the five-minutes-or-less rule and decided not to read, then changed his mind and got behind the mic, but spent four and a half minutes going on about how swell he was and how nobody else but him is writing on paper anymore and other self-aggrandizing pointlessness. When I (gently) interrupted to tell him that his time was almost up, he gave me the dirtiest look ever, then stormed off. (He brought to mind what my friend Joe Donohoe, who played my brother in Night of the Living Dead, might look like in thirty years if he totally lost his sense of humor.) At the next, the owners of the Three Dollar Bill Cafe told us that they'd received a rather unpleasant letter from the guy. Unfortunately, they kept forgetting to actually bring in the letter...until tonight. There's nothing penny-ante iconoclasts such as your humble narrator like better than hate mail, so I read the letter to the audience while Lauren Wheeler helpfully provided interpretative dance. Much fun. It was in this letter that he unfavorably described my writing (specifically my story about watching Jezebel suck dick in the Don't Ask Don't Tell Room) to D.H. Lawrence. I'll take the compliments where I can get them—I mean, it's not like he compared me to Jacqueline Susann. (Which would be a bad thing, right?) Vash and I were both more than a little bushed when it was over, so we returned to the Black Light District, only to discover that the lights were off. Which is to say, they wouldn't turn on. The overhead lights, that is. Ironically, the xmas and blacklights and even the lava lamp still had power, but the light fixtures were dead. We futzed around with the ill-labled breakers in the garage until we (inadvertently) got the neighbor's attention, who came downstairs to tell us that yes, the landlord knows, and that he'll be over to fix it the next morning. It was the husband, the father of the giraffe, and I found myself wondering if he'd actually seen the note. He didn't bring it up, and neither did I. There was nothing more to be said on the subject. Vash had an appointment for half past ten Saturday morning at the Clinique counter at Nordstrom, and I joined her. Didn't buy anything or get a makeover, but it was fascinating to watch all the same. We returned to the black Light District to find the power not yet fully restored, then went to the Sea Biscuit, as is our wont on weekend mornings. Sometimes. Not as much as it used to be, admittedly. Indeed, this was the first time in what felt like forever that we'd had a day with no pressing engagements, nowhere to be until that evening. We both had work we could be doing, there's always going to be work to do if we're lucky, but it wasn't that kinda day. It was, heaven forbid, a day off. She suggested we check out the R. Crumb exhibit at the Yerba Buena. After that, we had dinner at Tu Lan, a really fantastic Vietnamese restaurant approved by both Julia Child and Herb Caen on one of the gnarliest streets in town. (Julia Child is pictured on the cover in honor of her endorsement of the joint, and I find myself wondering how she got there—did she walk down Sixth from Market, a short but intense walk, or from Mission, which is even more of a gauntlet? Was she dropped off directly in front by a taxi or limo? It was in 1981; what were they smoking in those pre-crack days?) We've been there together once before, and I think we've gotten it into our heads to try everything on the menu. From there we headed into the Mission. Vash staked out seats in the Make Out Room while I jaunted over to Lost Weekend to get Ben-Hur for next week's Bad Movie Night. After Writers With Drinks (in which Vash's writing group crony Renee featured), we swung by the Walgreens on Mission to look for a lychee lip balm. No such luck, but I did engage in an impromptu sociological experiment, specifically comparing the amount and accessibility of lubricant at this particular Walgreens to the one at 18th and Castro, which is rather notorious for having the largest selection of lubre in all of explored space. Unsurprisingly, they didn't have much and it wasn't so easy to find, but I did encounter a product I've never seen before: Super Macho High Potency Formula with Bovine Glandular Concentrate, which the ingredients helpfully described as "Bovine Orchaic (Testicular) Substance." You know, bull 'nads. Gotta love the Mission. I'm actually quite surprised the FDA hasn't approved it yet, considering how they rushed through Viagra. On the way home (Vash often refers to the Black Light District as home, not as "your home" or "your place" or some variant thereof, and even though I'm nowhere close to being ready to live with someone again and both her and I have really great inexpensive roommate-free domiciles that we each intend to stay in until forcibly ejected, it makes my heart jump a little to hear her call it home because it tells me she's comfortable and planning on sticking around for a while, and even though I don't have any real reason to believe that she's going away, sometimes I get scared and need to be reminded), Vash said she wanted desert. After walking into Eggy and finding it confusing and frightening, we swung by Safeway to get ice cream, then returned home (mine, hers when she wants it) to watch pr0n, showing her stuff I've been looking at lately, what's been informing my wants and desires. While at Writers With Drinks, I got a voicemail teling me that the time of the bike safety class I'd signed up for had changed from eleven on Sunday morning to three in the afternoon. Worked out quite nicely, really, since we didn't get out of bed until noon. (Two nights together in a row, nothing but play in between, the thing about impermanence is that life cycles back around, nothing lasts forever but nothing is necessarily gone forever, either.) We had lunch at King of Thai on Taraval, and then she headed back to Wonderland (which I try to remember to refer to as "home" when we're on that side of the Bridge), and I drove to Modern Times for the bike class. Ironic on some level no doubt, but, the fact is, I'm just not ready to ride across the City yet. And certainly not back home late at night, as would have to be the case since I was hosting Bad Movie Night. I started things out with the WFMU alternative Jesus Christ Superstar mix and Negativland's The Mashin' of the Christ, which of course can only lead into The Passion of the Christ, a movie I'd been wanting to do from the beginning, and one which I wasn't able to get on the schedule until I started making the damn schedule. A low turnout, but they can't all be Snakes on a Plane, though The Passion ironically grossed several zillion dollars more than Snakes. There were those close to the Dark Room who practically gloated about the low turnout, spoke rather triumphantly of all the regulars and supporters who said they were not going to be there, because evidently one is not supposed to make fun of such a film, a two-hour anti-semitic transphobic gorefest which claims to be deeply religious and shit.. Which is all the more reason to do it, methinks. Besides, the goddamned movie made three hundred and seventy million dollars in the domestic United States alone, not counting foreign or video sales, and it's aligned with a two thousand year-old religion, so I'm sure it can survive being heckled by the likes of Sadie, Phil, and myself in front of a dozen or so people. My heart goes nowhere near anyone offended by it, and all my love to those who attended and stuck around to the bitter end. The money shot of any Jesus movie is the nail going through the hand (and terminology such as "money shot" are entirely appropriate, since it's pr0n), and this movie did not disappoint in that arena. My favorite moment was Phil's reaction to the money shot: mel gibson just came. Exactly. I cleaned up The Dark Room (a couple months back while helping me sweep up after Bad Movie Night, Vash said: pitu, this is as close as we'll ever get to running away and joining the circus, which sums up the appeal perfectly) then headed over to Sadie's, ostensibly to work. Mostly we just talked, which happens a lot. (I'm going there on Wednesday, and we've decided that we will be productive, damnit.) It was the weekend for leaving stuff behind; I'd left a bunch of printouts as well as the hate mail and the Trans Stage cost sheets at the Three Dollar Bill, and Cindy thankfully rescued them for me. Vash, meanwhile, left her Clinique bag, and came by on Monday night to pick it up. It felt like a bonus, seeing her again so soon. We'd planned on going to a Kenneth Anger program on Tuesday at the Pacific Film Archive, and then to see The Stooges at the Warfield on Thursday with Kirk Read and Horehound, so it wasn't another one of those weeks where I didn't know when I'd be seeing her again, but still, it made me happy. We talked for quite a while longer than I'd expected, mostly about our plans for this upcoming weekend. She's going to some classes and parties and stuff at the Citadel that I'm not entirely comfortable about. I mean, I'm fine with her going, but I couldn't see what my place would be at them, and I really can't handle feeling like a third wheel in those situations, of being there with her but not being there with her, it's how I felt through much of February, so I backed out. She really wants me there, though, so we discussed and processed and negotiated and worked out how to remain within certain boundaries and comfort zones, the kind of communication and this-is-where-i'm-at stuff which is so goddamned vital to any relationship, polylicious or not. It's been a major lack in my previous relationships, because I just didn't have the skills when I was with The Ex and as I developed them with Maddy I was (justifiably and with relevant precedent) afraid of explosions in reaction to the smallest things, and I'm still sometimes slow to tell Vash things (she used to ask me to tell her things, en espanol she would ask, and I wish I hadn't drawn a blank every damned time, maybe things would have been different?), but there's still so much more open two-way talkiness than ever before, certainly for me and quite possibly for her. We still have a few details to hammer out, but I think this weekend is going to work out. We're giving the Anger movies a miss tonight, which is something of a bummer, but it gave me the opportunity to seek out a table near a power outlet at the Sea Biscuit, no wifi but a relatively quite place to get some work done. The femme visibility piece feels close to being done, I have to start on the short Divas piece and the much longer essay for Julia's show in June, and then of course there's my book which has been terribly neglected as I've worked on other things, sometimes just summations of the previous ninety-six hours. But it's the work that matters, isn't it? 10:25pm Sissy characters in movies were always a joke. There’s no sin like being a woman. When a man dresses as a woman, the audience laughs. When a woman dresses as a man, nobody laughs. They just thought she looked wonderful.
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Monday, 16 April 2007 (when we fall) 11:07pm Among other things this weekend, my writing about the Power Exchange was compared to D. H. Lawrence. It was in an unfavorable context, mind you—I was essentially accused of ripping him off—but, still, that's kinda cool.
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Friday, 13 April 2007 (drinking mercury to the mystery) 10:20am My energy started to seriously wane around a quarter to two, so I gathered up my stuff to leave, only to wind up getting into a conversation with Sadie and staying until half past three. In bed by a quarter past four, and up again when my body allowed it, at half past seven. 4:02pm I've done pretty well today for three hours of sleep and no caffeine. I imagine I'll need a booster of some persuasion before the Queer Open Mic tonight, though.
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Thursday, 12 April 2007 (flashing dimly) 8:40pm I'm at Ritual again, for, what? The third time in two weeks? Wow. I so would not have guessed I'd become a regular here. Then again, it's mainly because I'm going to Sadie's later tonight to write, and I wouldn't have guessed that we'd become workbuddies, either. Never can tell, I suppose. My original plan had been to go to the Power Exchange tonight, but I went out and played these last two nights, so I need to be responsible and get some work done. The date with Johanna was really nice. We had dinner in the Inner Sunset (I bit my tongue at all the right moments), then ventured into the park and made darkly lit spectacles of ourselves in the shadow of the new DeYoung and the inexplicable safety pin sculpture, for the first half hour to a soundtrack provided by a saxophone player across the street. Couldn't have asked for better ambience. From there we returned to her place, an in-law similar to the Black Light District and also located in my neck of the woods, not as close as Collette much closer than Jezebel or Vash. A very comfy bed, too—I so seldom fall right to sleep in a strange bed, but this one was very welcoming.
We'll probably see each other again, and it'll be good, but really, that feels like too far into the future to predict. I'll be seeing Vash tomorrow night. That's all my mind can focus on at the moment, seeing her again.
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Wednesday, 11 April 2007 (if only tonight) 6:41pm Going to see Grindhouse with Maddy. That sentence surprises me on several levels. sometime after midnight I loved Grindhouse. Robert Rodriguez's half, anyway. Tarantino's left me cold. The man and I simply aren't compatible.
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