Sherilyn Connelly > Diary > August 11 - 20, 2005



8/14/05
My Face for the World to See (Part II):
The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly
a fiction


August 11 - 20, 2005

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Saturday, 20 August 2005 (degrees of severance)
11:14am


I should have known better. I do know better, but I did it anyway: I left the house without any makeup. I mean, it's okay to go out into the world barefaced (though I did put on foundation), but I should always at least have it on my person. So what happens? I'm going to be doing the Top 5 Trannypr0n Titles on The Tim & Roma! Show. An emergency run to Walgreen's mostly solved the problem. All the same, lesson learned.

1:15pm

Damn. I just knew that if I wrote about it in my diary before it actually happened, they'd decide to cut the segment entirely. Oh well. My makeup wasn't quite what I wanted it to be anyhow. For the record, the list: 5—She-Male Affairs (purple vinyl top and skirt, black sheer lingerie always on) ; 4—She-Male Debutantes (red dress and boa, lace jacket and sunglasses); 3—She-Male Domain (high ponytail, lace gloves); 2—The Trannysylvanians (actual story, goth aesthetic); 1—Sexo and Fantasias (Brazilian, two scenes without men).

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Friday, 19 August 2005 (a terrible gravity)
10:57am


Due to the miracle of networking (thanks, Marilyn!), the piece I wrote for the convention last week is being considered for a Bitch anthology. They haven't actually seen it yet—it needs another draft—but they're interested to see it, and that's a good start.

11:09am

Breaking up with me is the first step to blooming.

1:28pm

Thanks to Ali, I now have an Israeli gas mask. See? Networking.

5:23pm

And suddenly plans present themselves: Collette and I are heading to Bolinas tomorrow after for c0g's mother's annual party, which I haven't been since '99. First thing in the morning, though, is a Tim & Roma! shoot at the office. Thankfully, there's nothing which requires my presence on Sunday, as I suspect I'll be more than a little worn out.

sometime after midnight

One of the co-directors of Baise Moi bought a chapbook from me this evening. It would have been a great evening anyway, but damn.

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Thursday, 18 August 2005 (teratogenic)
10:25am


I've been spending much of my free time these last few days working on a new story for Sizzle tomorrow night. I'm really not all that happy with it, though I'd like to think it's getting a little strong in the editing process. My problem is that it feels familiar. Not because it's a true story, but because I can see a formula at work, like I've taken the skeleton of a different story and just changed the characters and details. I suppose that the more one writes in a particular format, the more the patterns emerge. Kinda like intro verse chorus verse chorus bridge solo chorus outro. It's not the only way to write or compose, but not everyone can be John Cage or William Burroughs.

I'm sure most working writers wouldn't mind being J.K. Rowling at the moment, however, or at least wouldn't turn down the kind of money she's making. Thanks to Collette, Rowling's latest is my current gym reading material. Hey, the bigger and shinier the carrot, the better.

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Wednesday, 17 August 2005 (a fire in the sun)
6:40am


Oh, yeah. My weight, according to the big fancy electronic scale at the Waddell Clinic, is 186.5. It's because I've been exercising in the morning and getting toned, and muscle weighs more than fat, right?

11:09am

I'm sure that's how it's spelled on her birth certificate, but I can't get over how much her first name looks like a typo to me.

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Tuesday, 16 August 2005 (on the outside)
7:12am


I cried last night, finally. I was lying in bed alone, and I got to thinking about Maddy across town at Unimatrix Zero also alone (presumably), and it hit. this is real. this is forever. Not the aloneness, but the not being with her anymore. Yes, of course, that was the whole point of me breaking up with her back in March, and I don't regret the decision. I feel like I've been so tightly wound (yet moving in other directions) since then, I'm only just now really beginning to feel it, to grasp the loss, to allow myself to really acknowledge my own pain in addition to hers. I briefly considered calling her, as she's done on the occasional late-night crying jag, but decided against it. Perdita did move up closer from her usual place at my feet to investigate. She's good for that.

Earlier in the evening, there was a Batman readthrough at The Dark Room. They're going to be rehearsing every Monday night, during my radio show, until the play opens. That's going to suck. Not the play itself; having read the first draft of the script and heard some of the readthrough last night, the play is going to be fantastic. Being present, even if I'm in the studio with my headphones on, through the gestation period. And it's not like I couldn't have been involved. I was offered the Assistant Director position, after all. But I declined for both egotistical and what I like to tell myself are practical reasons. So, I'm not involved because it couldn't be on my terms, because I wanted the role which isn't right for me, and that's nobody's fault by my own.

Meliza's in the play, as Aunt Harriet. She's also in my old writing group, the majority of whom attended the Queer Open Mic on Friday to read their pieces from the most recent assignment. I'm glad I was co-hosting that night, because it puts me into performance mode, a slightly different state of mind which helped me to deal with the emotional weirdness of seeing this group which I used to be a part of. I was asked to "consider withdrawing" for someone else's comfort level (it only felt like being ousted), and I agreed, lest the drama reach a fever pitch. Again, my decision, and nobody's fault but my own. I'm only as marginalized as I'll allow myself to be.

11:13pm

I went to the Waddell Clinic this afternoon for my twice-yearly poke 'n prod. I continue to be absurdly healthy, so much so that my endoc is going to be upping my premarin dosage. (Did you know that premarin's name comes from its source, the urine of pregnant mares? I do.) There's no really strong argument for doing so, but there isn't a good reason not to, either. Why not increase the throttle some? What do I have to lose?

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Monday, 15 August 2005 (hard to do)
2:01pm


Revelations from this weekend: I need to get a cell phone, and I need more electrolysis. These are facts I was aware of, but I've been hoping that if I ignored them, they'd go away.

The necessity (or at least strong logic and convenience) of a cell phone hit me on the way to the convention on Saturday. I'd already broken one of my own rules by not printing out a map and directions to the hotel. Instead, I simply jotted down the directions. Being a profoundly flawed human being, I wrote down Highway 92 East instead of West, and found myself crossing the San Mateo Bridge. A cell phone would have come in extremely handy so I could let Marilyn her know I'd done something really stupid and would be late. I still managed to get there on time, but only because I happened to have an area map in the car. It could have been much worse, or at least much more annoying. It's not like I would have gotten horribly lost or anything, but I would have hated to miss the gig entirely.

The other came to me at Sephora yesterday with Cindy, trying on makeup. I'd shaved the previous morning before the convention, but there they were in the deep dark truthful 7x magnification mirror: thick black hairs on my upper lip. They're growing in faster and thicker all the time. I'd also shaved my upper chest the day before, or I thought I had, but there was visible fur there, too. Yes, it was a hardcore mirror and I'm sure Cindy was right when she assured me that nobody else noticed, but still. Ow.

At the height of my self-consciousness, we passed by the makeover station. We were asked if we wanted to take a spin. Since the last thing I wanted was anyone to get that close a look at my face, as the aesthetician surely would, I said yes. What choice did I have?

5:31pm

I asked Maddy if she wanted to have dinner tonight before my radio show at Ananda Fuara, one of our favorite restaurants. She's getting her latest tattoo touched up, so she had to decline. (As it turns out, Ananda is closed today and for the rest of the month anyhow.) We haven't seen each other for a few weeks, probably not since Lynnee's show, which is surely the longest time we've spent truly apart ever since she moved out here. We also haven't been chatting much on IM, which was entirely my decision. Getting that kind of distance feels necessary to me, though it's been through sheer willpower that I haven't re-established contact with her that way. Because it hurts. I'm missing her, a lot. Now more than ever I'm feeling her absence, and I know it's a required step. Gotta feel the pain before you can heal.

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Sunday, 14 August 2005 (a private life)
10:50pm


Managed to channel my angst during an emotionally tricky Queer Open Mic on Friday and into a suitably manic co-hosting performance, made it to The Dark Room on time afterwards to see Uphill Both Ways, discussed our upcoming tour with Jennifer Blowdryer during a subsequent late-night Cancun run, somehow managed to whip together a halfway-decent piece for the convention on Saturday afternoon (Marilyn Wann hopes to print it in the NAAFA newsletter) and got videotaped by Telemundo, alternately danced and DJ'd with Collette for five hours at a party that night, went on a fairly successful Sephora-and-points-beyond trip with Cindy following the Pirate Cat Radio meeting today. Among other things.

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Friday, 12 August 2005 (within the heart of pyrrhia)
sometime after midnight


this is me being strong.

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Thursday, 11 August 2005 (vicious metal hounds)
10:14am


To the writer of the song which was blaring when I entered the gym this morning: yeah, well, maybe you aren't exactly prime relationship material at the disco club, huh?

The gym is going to start closing at ten rather than eight on weeknights. I hadn't actually gone at night yet, but feh.

4:11pm

Referring to this past year being dark, it struck me last night when hanging out with Mars of just how much has changed in the twelve months since I met her. My hours at work were greatly reduced a few days after I Lynnee and I got back from that tour, and I lost the job entirely a week later. From there things just went downhill, culminating in what was probably my worst Xmas Eve ever, and this is from someone who loathes December in the first place. Far from me at my glammiest, the look in my eyes in this picture from Xmas Day really says it all. (Though the story itself is yet to be told.) Earlier that month I'd trained at a job for a week before my trainer decided she wanted to keep the position. I think I was still shell-shocked from that, on top of the intense drama which had been occurring between Maddy and I, which had come to an unforeseen boil while waiting for the St. Charles Streetcar on an unseasonably cold New Orleans Xmas Eve. Of course, I would break up with her (we would not break up, I would break up with her, as she made me promise to always say) a few months later, this after two more failed attempts at employment. Then I got this job, which itself is evidence that there has been good, and there have been some people who've really helped keep me going. (You know who you are.) But it's been rough all the same.

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