Sherilyn Connelly > Diary > April 1 - 10, 2011



2/12/11
My Face for the World to See (Part II):
The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly
a fiction


April 1 - 10, 2011

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Sunday, 10 April 2011 (notes from the underfoot)
2:47pm


and of course you're sexier than her. that's a no-brainer.

4:32pm

At Javalencia. Marta's in Oakland for book club. She admitted that she couldn't really get into the book, but she feels she should go because, if nothing else, the prospect of her moving to Oakland is starting to loom. I don't like that thought, I don't like it one bit, and it finally brought me to tears this afternoon. It was a long time coming, and I'm not at all surprised that even after the emotional turmoil of last night the words marta going away is what finally took me down. And, of course, it wouldn't be truly going away, it's just Oakland, but still. I don't want her to go away. And there's less than nothing I can do about it either way, so I all can do is work through the emotions and hope for the best.

The first stop on yesterday's East of Twin Peaks World Tour was the San Francisco Sex Information headquarters—I assume? I actally have no idea if it's their headquarters or not, or even if they have such a thing. But they were having that day's trainings and panels and stuff at a UCSF building in the Mission, so that's where we went. I was arguably overdressed, especially under the flourescent lights and inside the beige walls where the panel was held (and those horrible, horrible lights in the bathroom) but I knew I had a long day and night ahead of me and that there would most likely be times that I absolutely needed to feel like I looked as good as I possibly could, especially for the club environments we'd be delving into later, and even more especially because according to NeonBunny (Frolic's promoter and primary DJ, whom I'd started corresponding with earlier in the week as I was tracking down a picture of Ilene and I from March) there would be a photographer with studio lighting and a little photo shoot area by the coat check, so full battlegear makeup and schoolgirl look, just like at the Exploratorium in February, if with a red plaid skirt rater than gray.

I was the second speaker of the three panelists, the first being a female-to-male transsexual and the third being a genderqueer. I feel like I probably babbled more than I should have, and certainly put too much (failed) effort into trying to be wry about the near-imposibility of keeping up with acceptable terminology (a point which the genderqueer made without irony when they started off by criticizing what they'd heard through the door earlier), but whatever, I managed, it was brief, and though Marta was with me she sat in the back where I couldn't really see, but thankfully I had the organizer of the all-girl party was sitting in the second row, so I was able to use her as something of an emotional anchor. Without her prior consent, it's true, but she's also one of the most relentlessly sex-positive people I know, so I'm sure she was okay with it.

From there we parked Phoebe across the street from The Stud (our eventual destination), walked to Basil Thai for dinner, and then to the new location of the Center for Sex and Culture. It was our first time there, and quite frankly, I liked it much better than I'd expected to, especially considering the way the building looked on Google Street View. Bu that's the funny thing about San Francisco: every building is like the TARDIS, or maybe the wardrobe that leads to Narnia. (I'm neither a Dr. Who fan nor a Chronicles of Narnia fan, so I'm not pleased with either simile.) It's humble enough on the outside, but inside it seems to go on forever.

Marta and I were there early, so we were able to get good seats—that is, seats which were close to the front door in case we had to leave early in order to make it to our next destination—as well as save a seat for Davina, whom we weren't certain was going to make it since she was getting over a gnarly illness. But make it she did, a bigger trouper than I've ever been.

Carol Queen described this edition of Perverts Put Out was the first for-real show at the new location, with lights and sound and paying customers and everything (not counting a few soft-launch events, burlesque practice and what not) making me all the more proud of the fact that Simon Sheppard asked me to read first. The first reader in the first show at the new Center for Sex and Culture! Not bad at all. Since it was their first show and not everything was up and running, the lighting was peculiar, in a good way: a strong red underlight, and a lamp from the side. Reminded me quite a bit of reading a K'vetch way back when.

The piece went over quite well. Carol certainly enjoyed it, and it's the kind of story of mine that she's always been a fan of—she was one of the first people to encourage me to write what eventually became Bottomfeeder, after all. Horehound read right after me, and the first thing he said when he got onstage was oh, sherilyn, you just don't know how good you looked up here. Which is of course exactly the kind of thing I love to hear, because I'm creature of vanity first and foremost, and I knew I was going to need to ride that wave of stroked ego for the rest of the evening. I also checked in with Davina, since she appears in the story. She liked the piece and wasn't bothered by the fact that she was in it, saying that she realizes that one of the risks of hanging out with a writer—any kind of a writer, never mind the voyeuristic thief (my words, not hers) that is your average memoirist—is being written about. Besides, she added, the story was accurate and fair and enertaining, so, no problem.

Marta and I had to bail as the second half of the show was starting to make it to the Hotel Utah in time to see her friend's band play at ten. (Davina stuck around to see the rest of the show, and told us she was going straight home after that.) In the taxi on the way there, I texted Ilene, something I don't do that often because as a general rule she doesn't reply, but I was feeling giddy and victorious and had to get it out of my system, in addition to how much I was already doing so with Marta.

The Hotel Utah smells funny. That was my first reaction upon going inside, anyway. I've somehow never managed to go, mainly because I hardly ever go see bands play. Most of the people there were watching a sports game (seriously, I have no idea what it was), and the actual music area had an extraordinarily low ceiling. I didn't have to crouch, but I know people who would have.

My phone rang. It was Ilene.

I went outside to take the call. It actually took place over three calls, since the connection was horrible, and it was a windy evening, which my iPhone doesn't handle very well. The only words I definitely picked up on were text...too soon...not upset with you...and I wasn't entirely certain about the last phrase, but I clung to it, and texted Ilene that we could talk in person at The Stud.

Perhaps because it was a largely straight crowd (which may have also partially accounted for the aforementioned funny smell), but a lot of people made a surprisingly big deal about the fact that Marta and I were both wearing bunny ears, especially considering that Easter is coming up. There weren't any direct comments about my tail, though.

We left the Hotel Utah at a quarter to midnight and hailed a cab. I was arrived at The Stud around midnight. It was busy, perhaps busier than it had been the month before for the one-year anniversary. Then again, by midnight I'm usually on the dance floor for keeps, which is where Ilene and Daisy and a few others already were. I hung back a little as Marta went up to Ilene (in full raccoon regalia) and put her hands on Ilene's hips from behind, which made me happy to see, but I was feeling shy and off-kilter, and didn't immediately foresee that changing.

Ilene came up, hugged and kissed me, then said: look, i just want to dance tonight, okay?

okay, I nodded.

So, to take care of business.

I fixed up my makeup as best as I could, then asked Marta and Ilene (who were dancing together) if they'd like to come with me to the photo booth before all our makeup melts off. Mine and Ilene's, anyway, since Marta was wearing any but a bit of Ilene's black nose had already rubbed off onto me when we kissed, so time was clearly of the essence.

The photographer took several pictures of the three of us, me being very conscious of not doing that scrunchy thing with my head which has messed up so many recent pictures—in addition to the Frolic picture from last month, there's the two pictures Mikl-Em took me at Bad Movie Night the weekend before, one great and one kind of horrible, and the angle of my head is making almost all the difference. Summer used to say: chin up, shoulders back, tits out, and she was right, and I may have finally learned that lesson. Though I had to politely ask him a couple times before it happened due to the many many distractions in the environment (including a fursuit who wanted to a take a picture with the bunnies!, i.e. me and Marta), the photographer also did solo pictures of me. I was upfront with the fact that I was hoping to get a new press photo, since my current one is over two years old, and I'm pretty sure I look better now, anyway, melty makeup and dizzy heart notwithstanding.

I gave the photographer our email addresses, which I wrote on the back of a scrap of the story I'd read at Perverts Put Out earlier. Seemed terribly appropriate.

Back on the dance floor, I simply could not find my groove, and when Ilene started dancing with a boy in a half-suit, I realized I needed to relocate. I announced to Marta and Daisy, who were sitting on stools along the wall engaged in conversation, that I was finally going to investigate the chill room. It was The Stud's poolroom, which had been so important to me in 1999 I'd never really spent any time in it at Frolic, in spite of the fact that it was now blacklit and filled with glowy things, which is exactly the kind of environment I like. Granted, it's usually full of people hanging out and / or yiffing. But now it seemed to be largely empty, except for one exceptionally large fursuit lying on the table, either napping or dead. (It would be hard to tell at first.) And on the dance floor, Ilene is dancing with closer to the boy, there's yiffing on the horizon, and I realize that my heart is breaking just a little tiny bit. why is my heart breaking?

I climbed onto the pool table and realized that "chill" was a not inappropriate name for the room, being close to the front door, and the table could have used a blanket under two underneath the sheet. Alas. I don't think the fursuit noticed me, but he did stir a little, so at least he was alive. I took some comfort from feeling his tail against my arm as I laid on my back and watched the glowing sheet above me, sometimes trying not to blink, sometimes keeping my eyes closed. The fursuit wakes up and leaves before long, and it's just me on the table, and for the most part just me in the room now. I kind of wish someone kind of wish someone would come up to me, ask to join me and maybe cuddle, but expect for one guy who leans over me way too close and stares for a few seconds with his eyes bulging out (hi-larious!), nobody does, because I'm unapproachable and undesirable, as always, and it probably doesn't help that nearly every trigger I have is being pulled: it's the Power Exchange with Jezebel all over again (ilene's apotheosis, because what worked before can work again, inasmuch as anything in a manuscript that nobody wants to publish can be said to have "worked"), or just about anywhere I ever went with Sadie, I'm the hot girl's weird alien friend who's clearly just along for the ride and not to be taken seriously as an object of desire, because why would anybody want me when there are real girls around, and I want to be out there with Ilene exploring this new and unexplored and thoroughly disreputable territory, and I'm not, and is going to be like it was before all over again, a cycle I'm doomed to repeat over and over and over until I'm dead? And there are so many reasons why this might work better, not the least of which being the certain distance created by the costumes and the suits, an equalizing quality that was thoroughly lacking at the Power Exchange, where even though I was never really close to being naked, I was still fully exposed, theoretical warts and all, and there was ultimately very little that was appealing about me to anyone beyond the boys who didn't care who sucked their dicks, and I wouldn't even do that, and even though the furry community is largely comprised of gay boys, well, that's okay, for me the question of the penis is entirely about who it's attached to, and—

Then Daisy is standing over me, standing a strangely beatific smile, and she asks how I'm doing. I shrug and lie, saying I'm okay. I hope she'll ask if she can she can get on the table with me, but she doesn't ask and I don't invite her, because everything I don't get is ultimately my responsibility, and therefore my fault if I don't get it. She mentions that Ilene is at the bar, in a furry cuddle-pile. I shrug again and say that's cool, hoping that my poker face is holding up, that the fact that I'm lying here on a fucking pool table wallowing and brooding and trying to lick my emotional wounds like the teenager that I haven't been for two decades isn't glaringly obvious, that for as much as I've grown and matured, deep down I'm still just a neutron star-heavy mass of need and insecurity. (With an incrasing flat stomach, at least!) And not all that deep down, either. As I always, I want in, I want to take this trip with Ilene (and Marta, if she wants to come along), I wanted to be accepted by the furries and be invited into their piles and yiff and see how far down the rabbit hole goes and I don't know if I ever will. And the fact that Ilene won't talk to me right now—well, why should she? Why should anybody?

Marta comes in and joins me on the table, and things are a little better because she's with me. Ilene enters and does not join us, because Daisy is leaving and Daisy is her ride. We say our goodbyes, and I finally get up off the table.

On the drive back to the Black Light District, I try to explain to Marta where my head and my heart are at, in hopes that I might begin to understand it as well. A lot of it scares her, though she admits that she's tired and it might all seem less scary in the morning. And it does, thankfully.

11:37pm

Pretty good turnout at Bad Movie Night for Foxy Brown, in spite of slash because of the SF Weekly article, and even Daisy finally checked out the show. For how many of my friends always say they'll make it one of these weeks, very few ever actually do. That's the event biz for ya.

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Saturday, 9 April 2011 (blown off this mountain with the wind)
10:45am


More thumping and scronking from upstairs as the gradual move-in process continues, but I only notice it when I take off my earphones and earmuffs, so it's all good.

9:12pm

Guess I'm gonna ride on the wall of death one more time. And almost certainly not for the last time.

11:53pm

See, everything only happens once. Got that? Just the once. It's a miracle it happened in the first place, and most things are lost forever.

sometime after midnight

An emotionally exhausting day and night, by the end of which I was lying on a sheet on a pool table in a blacklit room, looking at the flower pattern on the sheet hanging from the ceiling, watching the flowers fluctuate every so often as they glowed, not being sure if it was because I didn't have my glasses off or because there was a slight draft causing the sheet to move or the cumulative effect of years of intermittent acid use. Probably a little from all three columns, but it was where I needed to be, lying still while my head and heart chased each other in circles.

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Friday, 8 April 2011 (so much to die for)
12:54pm


Ilene and I jogged and stretched this morning—good gods, but my legs and core are achey from last few days, which only means that it's all working, right?—and had breakfast, and then I returned home to find Janeway has finally moved in for reals. Which is fine, except that she's alone right now, and has also figured out how to get into the entryway even though their front door is closed, and while she's perfectly friendly she doesn't understand at all why she doesn't get to come through my front door. There's a lot of barking and howling, and since Janeway's breed is essentially a domesticated wolf, she wounds like a wolf. Which is kinda neat in and of itself—I'd rather have a wolf howling than a chihuahua yapping, and the previous dog's bark had no personality to it at all—but Perdita's a little spooked, as one would imagine.

4:11pm

This is going to be my first Friday night at home alone for some time. Which is fine, since the next several nights are going to be plenty busy.

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Thursday, 7 April 2011 (hay pecados que dejan marcado el corazón)
12:03pm


I've been work-working from home this morning, since I have the Lyon-Martin appointment early in the afternoon and there isn't much point in getting settled in anywhere else. And after the appointment, I'm going to Ilene's.

3:10pm

Done with the appointment and at Ilene's now, but I have to go back to Lyon-Martin in two weeks. (We're going to assume for now that it will still exist in two weeks.) What happened was, my most recent February paycheck and EDD check were juuuuuust enough to bump me into the next income bracket, raising my quarterly premium from $150 to $300. So I'm going back in in two weeks, by which time I'll have received my much smaller March paycheck—I didn't get nearly as much work done in March as I should have—and that ought to bump me back down into the $150 range. Here's to hoping.

8:43pm

About to watch Gray's Anatomy, the third and final Spalding Gray monologue film (and the first of the two The First and I got to see him perform live in the nineties). And we'll probably listen to the CD of It's a Slippery Slope (the second of the two The First and I got to see him perform live in the nineties), and then that's pretty much it, at least until And Everything Is Going Fine hits video.

sometime after midnight

Things have changed, boundaries have shifted, but there's still a lot of work to be done, energies to align.

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Wednesday, 6 April 2011 (y en los rincones son las seducciones una danza de exquisita debilidad)
9:31am


At My Desk at Green House, thankfully unoccupied even though the place has been open for an hour and a half (since I took Marta to work this morning). Close call!

Back to Bootcamp for the first time in a few weeks. It always feels more brutal than the last time, but of course this morning felt like the most brutal ever for reals, and the instructor even told me to take it a little easier since I've been gone. At one point I left the room to refill my water bottle, and when I came back in the rest of the group was doing sprints. One of the regulars that I've never really interacted much with, we're always friendly but I don't really consider her to have become a friend as such like some of the others, she said to me: you're looking really good lately! Validation from acquintances with elevated heart rates is always the best kind, as far as I'm concerned.

11:22am

Just made an appointment with Lyon-Martin for tomorrow to renew my Healthy San Francisco account. There's really no part of this process that isn't going to be painful.

4:04pm

Even though Tuesdays are our usual nights together, Marta and I have wound up having dinner together on recent Wednesdays as well, so we're doing it again tonight just because we can. In Japantown, both because that's where the good food is, not to mention the Goodwill with the tail-scarves.

4:41pm

Most of the time, stating a desire is enough. If you try to make a case for why you want it—or, worse, how much—you've already lost it.

6:04pm

Most of the good tails are gone (bought by people who were going to use them as scarves, no doubt!), but I did just get flirted at by a very gay (in both the queer and jolly sense) man in a Buddhist monk robes.

Motioning to the blue tail I was wearing: nice tail!

Me: thank you.

Him, laughing: no, really, i mean it.

Me: yes, i'm sure you do. it sounded like a sincere compliment.

Still chuckling: of course, i could have been referring to your backside as well. but i just meant your tail.

Me: i knew that intellectually, yes, but i figured it was just about the tail.

And then I politely excused myself, noting that Marta (who was close by) was clearly putting a great deal of effort into not laughing.

6:25pm

Izumiya. Mmm, cold soba.

8:11pm

After dinner, I was about to drive us back to the Black Light Distrct until Marta reminded me that we weren't actually spending the night together. Oh, right. Phooey.

9:42pm

Some questions are so self-evident as to not require answering.
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Tuesday, 5 April 2011 (a wholly necessary cacophony)
7:19am


More press this morning, if in a slightly different direction, this time from the SF Weekly:
Why You Won't See a Listing for Foxy Brown at the Dark Room in the SF Weekly Print Edition

The Dark Room Theater is awesome.

However, while doing our Arthouse film showtimes listings for the print version of SF Weekly, we noticed the tiny theater's "Bad Movie Night" series was in Blaxsploitation Month, which includes Shaft and Foxy Brown. Shaft we could handle, barely, but when it came time to write "Bad Movie" and Foxy Brown in the same database entry formbot, it wasn't gonna happen. We've been at these listings since Bad Movie Night started, in 2005 and we've never given a crap what they've screened before. We have gone to it many times, yelled insults at the screen along with the hosts (who call it "Mystery Science Theater 3000 live") and died laughing.

The series has a slight history of misunderstanding us in nearly insignificant ways: The organizers still think that we joined in with the self-appointed defenders of filmic art who complained to them about including It's a Wonderful Life. We did no such thing since It's a Wonderful Life is corn, right off the cob, and deserves to be grilled once in a while; we enjoy laughing at it as well as crying with it.

But if loving Foxy Brown unironically and uncritically is wrong, we don't wanna be right. Pam Grier is a superhero for practically anyone who's never had one! The awesomeness -- shit, the fashion alone -- completely outweighs the off-kilter filmmaking, etc. etc. Obviously, you should go see it and decide for yourself.

Upshot: You won't see Foxy Brown listed in the Weekly under the heading of "Bad Movie Night." Ha ha ha ha! But you will be able to see it at the Dark Room April 10 at 8.

That right there, that is good publicity. And I know that they were kidding us about It's a Wonderful Life,, and they know that I know they were kidding us, becuase I talked to the writer about it when Ennui and I unexpectedly had dinner with her a few years back. But I find the fake beef to be hilarious all the same.

9:52am

At Mission Creek rather than Green House, since I'm hooking up with Marta after she gets off work this afternoon to go to the SFMOMA to see Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, which allegedly has some of Nan Goldin's work. And until then, I will get work-work done, I will.

12:41pm

It's shaping up to be an unusually busy Saturday: in addition to reading in Perverts Put Out in the evening and going to Frolic afterward, I've been asked by Marta's best friend to speak at a San Francisco Sex Information training panel in the afternoon. So there's that, too. Plus between Perverts Put Out and Frolic, Marta and I will be jaunting over to the Hotel Utah to see a friend's band. It's a tiny city, it is.



5:19pm

To my very pleasant surprise—I'm actually glad I hadn't known it would be there—the Goldin work in the exhibit was not just a few pictures, but her entire slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. It was really quite brilliant, and rekindled (among other things) my long-dormant desire to do the kinderwhore look. My original suspicion that I'm too freakin' tall to pull it off is probably still accurate, but what the hell. I'm not getting any shorter (nor younger), but I might as well work with what I've got.
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Monday, 4 April 2011 (historias de danzón y de arrabal)
2:22pm


Okayish turnout at Bad Movie Night last night for the original Shaft, and apparently our anniversary show last week was sold out. And as well it should be.

I'm at My Desk at Green House, getting back into the work-work productivity thing. Fortunately, the week off from it recharged my batteries, and we're also on the home stretch of this project, which helps.

Meanwhile, a new Unthology review, this time at Sabotage:

In the introduction to Unthology 1, the editors offer the following comments:

'Constraining the short story to a one or two thousand word limit…often produces what seem like protracted poems, all glittery surface but with no room to manifest a greater sense of significance or surprise. The longer story, the story unafraid to chase a few clouds, to play with chronology and form, the story that might have some semblance of plot-drive risks dying of neglect.'

While I personally disagree that reduced length is necessarily a hindrance to telling a good story (consider Ernest Hemingway's economical and oft-cited 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'), I think it is fair to say that Unthology 1 largely achieves what it sets out to do in terms of 'showcasing unconventional, unpredictable and experimental stories' and 'inject[ing] fresh venom into the shorter form'.

Indeed, the 17 pieces in the anthology present strikingly different narratives, albeit with varying degrees of success. A case in point is Tessa West's 'Parallax', where the recurrent definitions of photographic terminology provide an effective counterpoint to the main story about a relationship teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Ending with the definition of parallax ('the difference between what the viewfinder sees and what the camera records, especially at close distances') is a brilliant touch, but unfortunately one that has already been somewhat undermined by the too-obvious snatch of dialogue a few lines before:

"'It's important for us. It means something. I want you to see what's happened.'"

More problematic (but for far more prosaic reasons) is Sherilyn Connelly's 'The Last Dog and Pony Show'. Here is a narrative that sensitively reveals how even 'in the midst of the kinkiest of the kinky', one can still be 'an alien':

'i am alone. there is only me. i am here without her, just as i would be if she sat back down next to me.'

The subject matter is definitely intriguing, and animal role play is described here with a refreshing directness, but the 10-page account is sadly marred by typographical errors, consisting of repeated words and misplaced letters. The typographical issues do crop up occasionally elsewhere in the anthology, and the odd slip is certainly understandable, but an average that works out to one per page is surely too much for a single story.

On the other hand, there are many other points at which Unthology 1 rises to a level that has earned my profound respect. Michael Baker's narrator in 'Bleach' manages to come across as both deeply unhinged and sympathetic, a tough effect to pull off. James Carter's 'Herringbone', unlike many of the other stories, is unconcerned with human relationships, devoting itself instead to an extended meditation on the titular object/pattern that culminates in a stinging twist that really deserves not to be spoiled here. With 'Waiting Room', Martin Pond conjures up a near-futuristic world in which a boy is about to take a test, except no one will tell him what it is about, which has disastrous consequences for him.

The two novel extracts on offer also make for arresting reading. Viccy Adams's extract from Doing it by the Book is a disquieting, Kafkaesque exploration of a man steadily losing his identity, although the 'why' is presumably addressed elsewhere in the full novel. Sarah Dobbs's extract from The Lemonade Girl also ends on a mysterious note that left me wanting to read more, precisely because of how she had built up her protagonist in the preceding pages, this writer-professor with an enviable life who is now fighting his longing for an ex-girlfriend that seems tied to a sinister event in his past.

My highest praise, however, is reserved for editor Ashley Stokes's 'A Short Story About a Short Film', which is exactly what its title says it is. The story that unfolds is told via footnotes to a screenplay of a short film Kaliningrad, recounting the circumstances of its conception and filming. The method recalls Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, or more recently, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, and the technique is put to interesting effect here because the reader learns a lot about the character of Lloyd Fernery from what he says and how he says it. His obsession with the faithless and fickle Lucile Delph is both amusing and menacing in its intensity, particularly since the footnotes are explicitly directed at Lucile, as if she were watching the film. I can think of no better compliment to pay Stokes than to say that after I finished the story, I went and bought his first novel, Touching the Starfish, also available from Unthank Books.

It would be impracticable for me to discuss all 17 of the stories in Unthology 1, but as far as fulfilling its self-declared aims goes, I would say that Unthank Books has generally succeeded with this anthology. The stories are 'unconventional, unpredictable and experimental', and the overall effect 'hard-hitting, hilarious and entertaining'. As an avenue for showcasing the short story form, which I agree with the editors tends to fall into the cracks between the markets for novels and poetry, I genuinely hope that the publisher continues putting out more volumes in this series. Given the judgement they have shown in assembling this one, the next anthology should prove an interesting read.


Dig me, my intriguing subject matter was sensitively described with a refreshing directness!

I knew about the typos, of course. As soon as I saw them in my contributor's copy, I doublechecked the final draft of the story that I'd submitted—the final one after the editors had done their round of copyedits—and, yep, there they were. I'm a sloppy one, I am. Fortunately, the editors have since informed me that the reviewer was working from an earlyish galley, presumably the same as my contributor's copy, and the actual retail version is typo-free. Thank goodness for that.

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Sunday, 3 April 2011 (over the undercurrent)
10:15am


At Green House, at My Desk. Got here at nine just to be on the safe side, and if there's a band, I'm ready for them—I'm above, and my NRR 23 earmuffs-and-Sony MDR-EX76 headphones hack has been working quite nicely this past week, even though I was half-expecting the TSA agents to ask why I had earmuffs which are traditionally used for gunfire. There was a brief on Friday when I'd forgotten to empty my water bottle before going through security, but once their scanner dealy confirmed there was nothing dangerous in the bottle and they dumped it, there was no problem. My bad, that. I did have the foresight both times to remove my tail before going through security, not because I expected any static for the fact that I was wearing a tail, but rather because it's attached to my skirt with a metal binder clip. Better safe and all.

11:23pm

I think I may have figured out what my big vice is.

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Saturday, 2 April 2011 (back on the chain gang)
9:27pm


At Ritual, not my favorite place to be, but Borderlands closed at nine. And Ritual has wifi, while Borderlands not only has no wifi, it's a 3G dead zone to rival The Dark Room, so I can't even tether. Modern problems, indeed.

The tuna sammich Marta had at JFK before our flight home only really succeeded in making Marta crave a good tuna sammich, preferably a melt, so after the drive (no fedora this time) dropped us off at the Black Light District and we dropped off our stuff and let Perdita welcome us back (she was just fine, and Collette texted me during our trip to give us updates), we headed to the Sea Biscuit, which was surprisingly closed at eight on Friday.

We then realized that what we should do is call Ilene and see if she wanted to have dinner with us, which she did, so headed to the House of Boxed Steam to get ready. I fixed up my makeup, including upgrading my eyes, as did Marta, both going a little gothier than we were otherwise, and of course any level of gothiness on Marta's part is more than she would otherwise.

After dinner at a sushi place in Ilene's neighborhood, heavy on the maguro nigiri, we drove into the Mission. I'd been perhaps overly worried about parking, but it turned out not to be a problem at all—at eleven at night enough people have started to go home for the evening that there were plenty of spaces in the general vicinity, and like last time, the garage was not an option.

Getting in was far simpled than we'd expected. Not that I'd expected any trouble, and I'd already known we were going to be getting in for a discount because the organizer and I are both veterans of the all-girl parties (that was where we first met, fact), but evidently at some point a decision was reached to let said veterans (me) and their guests (Marta and Ilene) get in free. Heck, the coat check was even self-serve, and when I tried to put money in the tip jar, I was told that it was unnecessary. This party was determined keep things gratis.

Thank you, San Francisco. It's good to be back.

The three of us made quite a striking group, I rather think, less because of obvious clinical sexiness but more because we looked like a mini-gang out of The Warriors, each of us in black tank tops with glasses, and Ilene and I both in mismatched skirts and stripeys with boots. We were clearly there as a unit, and remained so. After watching a brief burlesque performance (the best kind) on the dance floor, the organizer gently ushered us into the fuck room. Marta and Ilene and I found a mattress to call our own, stripped down to our panties and tank tops (eventually down to just panties, eventually down to nothing, everything being eventual in its own time) and we commenced with the group cuddling and smooching and handling, with much of the spark especially happening between between Ilene and Marta, which was exactly as I'd hoped and wouldn't have had it any other way. I gathered it was because of their partners—Porter in one direction, Marta's boyfriend and myself in the other direction—Ilene and Marta perhaps hadn't had sex with another genetic female in some time, me being the only of the partners who identifies as female anyway, and I am female for all intents and purposes except for the genital issue, but I'm also the first to admit that it's not the same thing—not better or worse, just different. And it's of course a pure matter of taste, because so few other transsexuals are remotely attractive to me, nobody since Jezebel has turned me on at all, and from what I've seen of her lately as she's now living out her pr0n-star dreams, I wouldn't find her nearly as attractive as I did the night we first met, and that's okay, I'm glad she's finally getting what she always wanted out of life, as I am, and I remained stunned and grateful that girls like Marta and Ilene and Davina do find me sexy and desirable, and it's not something I ever intend to take for granted (I am conscious at times that this is what is often considered the classic hetero boy fantasy, the three-way with two hot girls, and I have to remind myself that I'm not being a cliche because I have not been a boy in a very long time) even as I have a tendency to push things as though I'm somehow entitled to any of this good fortune, which I am not.

But for now it's all good, and I certainly don't mean to imply that it was just Ilene and Marta secksing up each other while I was on the sidelines—far from it, we coupled and recoupled in all the configurations geometry allowed, moving beyond the recently lowered boundaries in terms of what bits of mine and Ilene's could go where, and I'd always suspected that tonight was when those boundaries would change, and it's when I wanted them to, with Marta present and actively engaged and very much a part of it all because I love her and don't want her to ever feel left out and neglected, even on those times when she isn't actually physically present, when it's just me and Ilene or me and Davina (eventually? Maybe? Or not? That's the future, so I couldn't begin to know, and what will happen will happen) or Marta and whoever—this is all tricky stuff, no question, a lot of ways things can go wrong, but also a lot of ways can go right. And it has been, mostly.

At one point when I return from the bathroom down the hall—walking there and back fully nekkid, because why not at this point?—a large Japanese woman who'd been clearly watching us for a while, perhaps a bit too closely by the posted rules of the event, gloms onto me for a rambling conversation that goes everywhere and nowhere, mostly one-sided. She's drunk, or hopped up on goofballs, or something, and it's really hard to follow what she's saying or what she's meaning half the time (again, not due to accent or language issues, she was clearly born and raised in America), though she does start off well by raving about how much like she likes the squid, which is of course the quickest way to remove the thorn from my conversational paw. She said that the squid reminds her of Harajuku fashion, and in a good way, not in a "white peope like yourself really shouldn't be appropriating my culture" kinda way. (And it's not like I could really pull off true Harajuku style, not being as tall as I am, and if I was more of that height I'd probably go straight for Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club anyway.) It was actually the second piece of high praise slash validation along those lines I'd received that evening, the first being from the waitress at the sushi restaurant, who really liked my Ramona Flowers bag, which is itself second generation-manga, filtered through Scott Pilgrim much like the squid itself is a non-white hairstyle filtered through Switchblade Symphony, and I've only ever received compliments from black and/or Jamaican women about it. I may be an imperialist who's appropriating cultures for her own vanities, and I used to get a lectures from certain white friends when I talked about getting the squid (or the time I expressed a fondness for cheongsams and said I hoped to fit into one someday—whooboy, I got a major finger-wagging for that one), but representives of said cultures have yet to have a problem with it. Go figure.

In any event, during our mostly one-sided conversation (which I was desperately trying to find a way to gently extract myself from, and one which would not result in her attempting to join in with Ilene and Marta, which I think she wanted to), and after she'd been complimenting not only my hair but just my overall look and body shape, she finally looked down at my crotch in what was almost a comically exaggerated motion of bending and looking, saw my penis, then laughed and shrugged and said oh well! Um, yeah. Oh well, indeed.

I polished off my bottle of water and excused myself to go refill it. She was thankfully gone (or at least elsewhere) when I returned, and since Marta and Ilene were blissfully deep in a groove with each other, I laid down a respectful distance from them on the couch, trying not to announce my presence or interrupt them at all, and just enjoyed the spectacle. Eventually I realized that they were talking about me, wondering where I'd gotten off to, and not realizing I was so close by because they're both only a few notches above legally blind when without their glasses. Marta: where is sherilyn? Ilene: i don't know. Me: right here. just watching. Ilene: get over here! it's not fair to hide from your blind girlfriends! To drive the point home after I made me way over, she started spanking and biting me, meaning she'd taken to heart something I'd talked to her about earlier in the evening: that in an ideal world, sex (and life) would involve perfect reciprocity, but that is not the world we live in and everyone has different likes and limits, and it's okay to do to someone what you wouldn't like to have done to yourself so long as it's all consensual in both directions, and in any event, life would be kinda boring if everybody liked the exact same stuff anyhow.

At what turned out to be around two in the morning, the organizer came into the fuck room and informed those who were left that that it was getting to be about that time. Which was a shame, because the three of us had just formed a perfectly arranged snuggletribe, and we all probably would have dozed off if it was an option. Indeed, I'm not convinced that Marta and Ilene didn't a little. We stayed that way for as long as we could make the moment last, but like moments must, it ended.

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Friday, 1 April 2011 (madcap manhattan weekend day five: it's easier to leave than to be left behind (it's pulling me apart), leaving was never my proud)
8:18am


landing on water is great so far! i want more!

That was My Agent's reaction to the sample chapter that I sent her, the same sample chapter that failed to get me a San Francisco Arts Commission grant last year. But it's a good start this time around, I'd say.

Though we cheated and took a cab from the airport to Tom's, we're taking the subway to the airport this time. I'm ready for it now.

3:21pm

We got through security without any hassles this time, nor did we have to go through one of the scannery booth things. On the other hand, our gate has exactly four power outlets. That's pretty cold.

1:45pm

In the air now, and I've reverted back to Pacific Time.

I'm writing on the plane on Marta's laptop, which is mildly tricky because she's sleeping and expanded into my space and I have to type with one hand, but whatever, this is the story of my life in more ways than I can think of. Besides, if Christy Brown could write his his fucking foot, then I can type with my right hand. (Marta, amused: you take it so seriously!)

7:41pm

Oh hai, San Francisco.

The in-flight movie was Tron: Legacy. Turns out when you spend the whole time writing on a laptop and listening to Coil, it's not such a bad flick. And I still intend to do be able to do the the Quorra look by this November. (And Target having the discs on sale helps, too.)

It's almost eleven in New York, but for us, the night's just getting started.

sometime after midnight

it's not fair to hide from your blind girlfriends!

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