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Friday, 10 December 1999 (inauguration of the mechanical christ) 7:11am It didn't work. 8:18am Of course! Stupid, stupid, stupid! It's an AMD K6, not a K6-2! Damn, that was close. Almost had to ask The Ex... 12:31pm ...instead, I've asked The Ex's boyfriend, who built the computer in the first place. He says the patch was included when he first installed Windows, so it shouldn't be doing this. I can only assume this means that installing Word somehow disabled the patch. Fucking Microsoft. To uninstall Word (Office 97, to be specific), it requires the original CD. Which is no problem, except that while in Safe Mode the computer doesn't recognize the CD drive. Aaargh... 2:20pm At the very least, we finally have my hooked dialup set up on Maddy's computer, so we're not completely isolated. 4:10pm I managed to avoid the company party, but there's another bullet headed my way, this one straight for my head. A departmental luncheon at some fancy restaurant in SoMa. Mandatory, of course, just like Fun Day was. Considering that the place apparently has an award-winning wine list, I presume that means hooch will be served. I've promised myself I'm not going to be around the big boss when he's drinking; I really don't give a good goddamn if I'm expected to be there or not, I ain't goin'. What are they gonna do, fire me? I don't fuckin' think so.
I feel a little guilty about abandoning Brian, who'll be only slight less uncomfortable
than I would. But considering I'd otherwise be in an even more of an enclosed space than
usual with
the big boss, The Fidget Queen, and the big guy (who's on another of his monumentally depressing
phone calls, hearing this man talk about death and disease and addiction and whatnot is
really destroying my will to live)...no. No, no, no. I come in, I do my job, I do it well,
and I shouldn't be expected to pretend to socialize if I don't want to. Particularly since
this is what the company does in lieu of bonuses. I'll fully admit, there's a tad
of bitterness on that level, too.
Shrine tonight. This is going to be a good thing.
nightswimming deserves a quiet night
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Thursday, 9 December 1999 (buy the sky and sell the sky) 8:06am I've learned a valuable lesson: if you're trying to wake up in the morning, make sure your alarm is set for AM, not PM. You'd think it would be obvious, but apparently not. (To answer your question, I habitually turn the alarm off altogether when I actually get out of bed, hence it never went off during the day. Smartass.)
My brother Jonco was kind enough to walk me through my computer problems over the phone last night
and isolate the cause, or at least what we suspect to be the cause. Won't know until get back
home tonight and reinstall a driver which happened to go kaput, entirely coincidentally, while
Maddy was installing Word. Not her fault in the least bit; it just so happened, that's all.
Hopefully she'll come to accept that eventuallly....
That's the pharmacy, though. You don't pay at the pharmacy, but rather at the front registers. There, they don't know me. They don't need to. So the checker is ringing me up. All the bottles are in one paper bag, and the receipts are stapled to it, with the premarin receipt on top. She charges me that amount, apparently unaware that there's actually roughly $140 more worth of drugs ($125 of it being the meridia) unaccounted for. The right thing to do would have been to bring it to her attention and pay the full amount. Instead, I paid the amount she told me and left the store in a huge moral quandry and with much more money than I'd expected to. Yeah, it was wrong of me. I'm a very bad person. But I was able to use the "it's a big evil multination corporation and I'm just a starving webmonkey wearing too much eyeliner" rationalization. Whether or not the checker (probably seasonal help) will get in trouble is hard to say, since according to the receipt it was simply "RX," ergo her drawer won't be short. The discrepancy will be between the pharmacy and the register, and there doesn't appear to be any system in place for making sure that each individual item is paid for. Possibly there was some method I'm unaware of, of course. But from the looks of things the checker wouldn't get nailed for it, nor would the genuinely nice people in the pharmacy. None of which immediately eased my conscience or changed the fact that I was essentially stealing. Not quite the same as knocking down an old lady and taking her purse, but stealing all the same. As it happens, the extra amount was roughly what I owed Maddy on the DVD player, so I paid her back when I got home. Clearly, it was meant to be.
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Wednesday, 8 December 1999 (time and distance are out of place here) 10:22am It would seem I need to put a new CD in my alarm clock, since I once again seem to have completely ignored it. I'm pretty sure Hole's Pretty on the Inside is currently in there, but I'm not sure since I haven't heard the damn thing for a while.
Or maybe I'm just not wanting to get out of bed as much as I used to. Empirically, of course, my
new bed is awfully damn comfy, but not wanting to leave Madeline has a lot to do with it, too.
Maddy met Dana and Costanza last night. We'll be catsitting for them next week, which should prove interesting. I'm just glad she's finally getting to meet the people she's been corresponding with for months now, the people who have actually been much more supportive of her move and her attempts to improve her life in general than the people who are ostensibly closer to her, or who at least used to live physically closer to her. She's discovering the odd sort of fame/recognition/notoriety in which public exposure of this sort can result. After her preliminary interview with the staffing agency yesterday, she came to the office and went to lunch. She returned to the agency to take some Word and Excel tutorials to theoretically increase her eligibility, then came back here so we could go home together.
While taking the elevator, she was recognized by my coworker Pike, from reading my journal.
It wasn't unpleasant, but still weirded her out just a bit. She hadn't quite gotten used
to it...
while initializing device IOS: That can't be good.
Guess it's time to hook up Maddy's computer...
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Tuesday, 7 December 1999 (echoes) 10:46am Madeline's interviewing with a staffing company right now, one recommended by a coworker who told her to mention his name. Very nice of him, I must say. In restrospect, though, I probably should have warned her about the sheer amount of paperwork these places require. I told her about the various tests (math, typing, Word, etc.), but that first stack of forms they hand while you're waiting in the lobby...oh, the pain. I remember nothing but the pain. Actually, I do remember a few other things my from own hellish encounters with the world of staffing agencies last year, between Organic and Autodesk. The last one I interviewed at (before I got the call out of nowhere from the headhunter which resulted in the Autodesk job which resulted in me meeting being able to afford to see a shrink and starting electro and also meeting Lorne which resulted in me interviewing at Snap! which resulted ultimately in the job at CNET wherein I met Summer who was an unknowing catalyst for my overdue breakup with The Ex which resulted in me being in the right place at the right time to meet Maddy), had a full-length mirror across from the waiting area with a sign above it reading, "Would you hire this person?" Fuckers. That's not a nice thing to do to someone's self-essteem just before an interview. And my self-esteem was pretty damn low, having unsuccessfully interviewed at several agencies and also looking like shit because it had been at least two months since my hair had been done, so not only did I have megaroots but the red chunking I'd had done was looking pretty bad, too. I liked the chunking and don't regret it (indeed, it's been on my mind lately) but when it fades it looks really bad. In any event, I'm sure things will go much better for her. Since it was to be her first time venturing downtown and her first trip on the muni, I accompanied Maddy. Seemed the least I could do, really. It doesn't matter how clear the instructions are, getting around this city can be extremely intimidating. Not for safety reasons per se but just because it doesn't make a damn bit of sense. Five years now and I'm still not convinced it makes any sense.
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Monday, 6 December 1999 (second guessing) 7:13 pm Ow. I think my body's finally calling bullshit on me for not really giving it a chance to relax lately. Either that, or it's telling me I need to start working out again in a big way.
Not to mention I think I'm finally getting that cold I've managed to dodge for so long...thus raising the
question of why I felt compelled to get made up this morning. Couldn't begin to guess.
What a frighteningly obscure statement.
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Sunday, 5 December 1999 (surrender) 1:21 pm Oh, and it plays CD-Rs. A very, very important detail. 1:24pm Woohoo! A spit-take! It didn't come out of her nose, but everything in good time...
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Saturday, 4 December 1999 (she's a jar) 12:32pm It's probably a good thing that nobody uses the "next day/previous day" navigation, because I've been horrible at keeping them current. Guess I'm just distracted.
In spite of it being horribly bright and sunny, we're still planning on venturing
into the outside world...but not for too long, one would hope...
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Friday, 3 December 1999 (inauguration) 10:26am He's fighting with his boyfriend. Further proof, not that it was necessary, that the world keeps right on spinning. When I made it to the muni station last night, I checked my voicemail; there was a message from Maddy saying that she was about sixty miles outside of San Francisco and would give me a call when she got closer to get exact directions. Yikes. Needless to say, the train couldn't have moved fast enough. She had no pager or cel phone, so there was no way to communicate except for me to be at home when she called again. For not the first time that day, I'd found myself wishing I'd simply driven. I got home at about 8:10, about five mintues after her second call, this time from Vallejo. She said she was going to cross the Bay Bridge into the city and find a phone. Double yikes. For someone who's never driven in the city by herself, attempting to navigate through... The phone rang again an hour later. She'd made it to the Safeway at Market & Church somehow. After a brief attempt to give her directions (something I've always been very bad at, although I'm constantly getting strangers asking me for help), I wised up and headed out there. After standing in the parking lot for five or ten minutes in an unbroken embrace, she followed me back to the apartment. Oscar and Mina were, as is customary for cats in the moving process, were put into the bathroom as we moved what of her stuff she was able to fit into her car into the apartment. Quite a lot, all things considered. I'd done as much cleaning as I could in the hour I'd had been at home earlier, but there was still a lot of work to do, including the herculean task for making room on the desk in the bedroom for her computer. (You didn't think she'd leave it behind, did you? I wouldn't ask her to do something I wouldn't be willing to do myself. Which has been something of a guideline for other aspects of our relationship, but I digress.) Another necessary task in the near future is getting a chair for the desk; the chair I'd been using was from the kitchen set The Ex had removed barely 24 hours previous. We got as settled in as we could, which involved making sure there was room on the bed and that not too much damage could be caused by the cats (a fool's errand, to be sure), and went to bed. Sleep was very, very nice...
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Thursday, 2 December 1999 (hiatus) 9:22am Ah. So that's what my apartment looks like with just my stuff in it. 2:35pm I got out of work last night just in time to make it to the 7:30 of Last Night at the Lumiere. I'd driven that morning, Madeline's call helping me to get up early enough to park in the super-cool free parking area (hereafter to be referred to as the Batcave, please make a note of it). I had to bring the car actually around to the building in order to bring down the boxes of kitchen stuff Maddy had sent. The movie, a little Canadian film about the final six hours before the world ends, was pretty good. When I'd told Maddy what it was about, she commented that it sounded like my kind of movie. She knows me well. The temptation to go to another movie afterwards was very strong. After all, it was only 9:30; The Ex said she'd be there around 8pm, so she could still be there. For that matter, I'd told Imani that she could leave whenever was most convenient for her, so theoretically she may have still been there too. But I was tired, I'd been spending way too much money lately, and who knew, they might both be gone. The only way to find out was to go there. If I drove home and saw The Ex's car or some other sign of movement, I wouldn't even get out of the car. End of Days was playing at 10:30pm in Colma, so I could just go see that (a somewhat appropriate choice considering the movie I'd just seen; you can't have too much apocalypse in one evening, I say). Surely they'd be gone by 1am. The other reason I was reluctant to go home was just not wanting to see my apartment gutted. Even though I knew it was going to happen and had known for some time, the thought still filled me with dread, much as it had a couple months before when I hid out in Bolinas as The Ex made the first big move. The extremely paranoid part of me was convinced it would be trashed. A glance in the garage confirmed that both The Ex and Imani had both left, since what things they'd kept in there were gone. I took a deep breath and went inside. So this was it, huh? Not so bad, really. Lots of room, all things considered. For a place that size, anyway, and I'm still way too much of a packrat. Must learn to purge. Maybe I'm lacking foresight. It's possible, and certainly I've been accused of worse things. But earlier in the year, when I was considering what it would be like and how I would fee when The Ex moved out, at no point did it occur to me on the day that she removed the last of her things, I would be bringing in boxes of kitchenware mailed from a woman who was currently driving across the country to live with me. I suppose I could look back through my old journal entries, but I'm pretty sure the thought never crossed my mind. I stayed up later than I should have, not getting to bed until after South Park at 1:30am. I think I was just trying to experience and maybe even enjoy this brief period when it would be me, just me. Nobody else. No ex-girlfriend's inescapable presence, no houseguest or their incessant cat. Ironically, I was probably able to not get depressed over it (congratulations, you're all alone, just like you knew you always would be) because of Maddy's impending arrival. Soon she'd be here and it would be our place. And that would be good. That would be very, very good. For just about eleven months after the breakup, after something which at its worst felt like me recklessly destroying my life (even though I knew it was necessary, we both knew it was necessary, The Ex never really attempted to relieve me of the burden of that guilt, except for those one or two occasions when I broke down in her presence and her compassion got the better of her), this was a turn of events which was unpredictably good beyond words. This was a redemption which I couldn't have hoped for.
In the meantime, a brief meantime though it was, I'm letting myself enjoy it,
and I'm finding it's making the anticipation that much more potent...
Except for the fact that the home stretch always seems to take the longest, tomorrow's drive should in fact be the simplest; Reno's about four or five hours away, depending on the traffic. If she leaves early in the morning as she's been doing, she should be getting into town before noon. Which should mean that she'd miss the worst of the traffic coming into the city. Then, of course, there's a part of me which is hoping she'll call and say that she's just going to do it tonight and get it over with, that it makes more sense to just drive the rest of the way and get in late tonight than to pay for a motel. I don't see that happening and I suppose it's for the best that it doesn't, but still, it's a nice thought.
In any event, I'm sticking close to the phone. Hell, I haven't even given her precise instructions on how to
get to my place yet. We meant to before she left, but, y'know, it was all kinda hectic...
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Wednesday, 1 December 1999 (the morning of the fourth night it all ends) 7:16am It was probably the worst rain that I've been caught in this year, and it was nothing compared to what I had to contend with while working at Autodesk last year during the height of El Nino. Then again, I wasn't such a total fucking fashion victim last year, ergo I wasn't dumbly wearing velvet leggings. Don't get me wrong, they're surprisingly comfortable when they get wet, but considering how questionable it is for someone of my bulkitude to be wearing anything tight at all... The rain had stopped by the time I got off the train and walked back home, a very good thing since the wind had actually broken my umbrella. (Buying cheap at Walgreen's is a terrific strategy for sunglasses, not so much for important things. This is something that will sink in eventually.) Imani said that The Ex had been by to pick up some stuff, and would be back later. I'd known she was probably going to be coming by that evening, but she'd never confirmed one way or the other. Figured it wasn't necessary, no doubt. Fair enough. I noticed that most of Imani's stuff, which had been in bags in a corner of the bedroom, was gone. She'd said before that she was going to move it all into the garage so that I wouldn't have to deal with her friends when they came to help her move. I'd told her at the time that it wasn't necessary, an in fact I'd been hoping that she wouldn't since washing machine is acting up again and the landlord seeing a third person's belongings in the garage would likely raise questions I didn't want to deal with. Alas, it was done. I called my landloards to confirm that they were home so I could pay the rent; they were. Good. Maybe I'd also bring up Maddy's impending arrival, maybe I wouldn't. Before I left again, Imani asked if there was a specific time I wanted her out by on Wednesday, like before I got home from work. The look in her eyes... No, I said, there wasn't, not really. I wasn't even sure when I was going to be getting home from work anyway. Well, it's just because she was going to have to arrange to have people pick her up— —that look— —so she's going to have to work out at a time with them. Really, I assured her. Whenever's convenient. If it's before I get home, fine. If it's after I get home, that's fine too. That seemed to satisfy her, but that look— I left and went to my landlords'. It went smoothly enough. I didn't mention Maddy, and they didn't ask if I'd gotten a cat yet. I was afraid that if I said no, they'd call my bluff and say they'd heard it through the door or noticed the cat carrier in the garage before I'd wised up and brought it inside. Nope. It was the usual small talk, and I'd imagine they were curious why I wasn't made up; in fact, this was probably the most unshaven they'd seen me in a long time, as I hadn't shaved since Monday morning (and still haven't as I write this, to test both my progress and my will). Needless to say, they didn't ask. Home, from there, was not an option. Home would mean not only being around Imani and the tension which had grown between us as thick and fast as Fresno tule fog, but also before too long The Ex and possibly her boyfriend as they ostensibly removed the remainder of her stuff. That much negative energy, surrounded by that many people who were being displaced by me—no. No, there was no way I could handle that. Turning tail and running like the chickenshit I am was the only option that made sense. I briefly considered calling Dana and hiding out at her place, but no. That wouldn't be quite right, either. She's been making the evil South Bay commute, and surely would want nothing more than to relax at home with Costanza and shut out the rest of the world entirely. A sentiment I understand entirely too well, and her solace is not something I would allow myself to disturb without a good enough reason. This was not a good enough reason. This was just me reacting the wrong way to a situation of my own creation once more, much like I had for the first half of this year, in the post-Ex / pre-Maddy days. To a movie, then. What else was there? Something that didn't involve spending money? Ha. Perish the thought. I still hadn't seen Last Night, and knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I missed it entirely. (Funny how video seldom enters into the equation. If I miss a movie in the theaters, I don't think to myself "I'll catch it on video," but rather, "Oh well, I never got to see it.") However, Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder was showing at the Castro for only a few more days, and in the original 3-D no less. Not to mention I still had pictures to pick up, so into the Castro I went. After getting the pictures (the one roll of color film I shot in Kansas), I had about an hour to kill I spent it wandering around, trying to get my head together. I imagined what it must be like at my apartment just then, with The Ex and Imani trading war stories about what a bad person I am and how much it sucks living with me and (in spite of that) my cruelty in forcing Imani out into the street. Probably it wasn't like that at all, and yet I couldn't shake the feeling: somewhere, I was being hated. Somewhere, once again, for the nth time this year, my flaws and weaknesses and generally screwed-up nature were being discussed and analyzed and catalogued. All the ways I'd messed up other people's lives in pursuit of my own inexplicable yet selfish goals. It was happening again. That look in her eyes reminded me of nothing so much as The Other, in those awful months (months, I must remind myself, that situation lasted almost half a year, it had gotten intolerable by February yet I knew I had to hang on until June, another situation I'd entered into willingly) before everything blew up, that look of cold resentment, of utter disappointment and disgust in how I'd failed the most basic, charitable expectations, perhaps kin to the look my mother was piercing me with after telling her that The Ex and I were no longer engaged or maybe the one she was giving me across the table at breakfast on Saturday morning as she pondered why her newfound activism was not allowing her any more of an understanding of this person who was once her baby and now— these are the thoughts that go through my head. i don't know what happens in the real world. The many couples didn't help. Loneliness sucks. Being alone has lost has whatever kind of romance it once had. The wannabe loner gutter-goth thing no longer contained any kind of satisfaction in and of itself, made all the worse by my own plummeting self-image. I know better than to compare myself to genetic women, and yet sometimes it's very difficult not to, to not judge myself by impossible standards, to come to terms with the fact that I may, for the rest of my life, be called "sir." That I'm big and tall and that alone may be my undoing, the unchangeable fact of my skeletal structure. And that'll I'll always look like a boy. Put the two of them together, and... I returned home after the movie (very good, and I'd never seen a 3-d movie in the theater before) to darkness; Imani was asleep, her recent attempts at getting back on a more traditional sleep schedule apparently being successful. Good; having to be a daysleeper wasn't doing her any favors, particularly since the only windows in my apartment face to the east. I kept the lights off until I went into the bedroom and shut the door. The Ex's clothes were finally gone from the closet, as were some of the sheets off the bed—the yellow and green blankets were hers? funny, I coulda sworn—and the pillowcases. Nothing if not thorough, she is. I went into the bathroom; apparently the little shelf thing on the back of the toilet had been hers, too. Okay. Sure. Fine. I plopped into bed with most of my clothes still on and set the alarm for 4am, a solid three and a half hours of sleep if I was lucky enough to fall asleep right away. I didn't, of course. I assume the alarm must have gone off, but I don't remember it doing so. Instead, I was awoken at 5am by the phone, and the reason I have to keep on going these days: Madeline. She was about to start the next leg of her trek, through Colorado to Salt Lake City. She sounded very confident that she'd make it, and indeed was quite pleased with her progress thus far. She said that she'd call me tonight, and that she loved me.
And so, I keep on going. When I return tonight, I suspect my apartment will look very different; all I saw was the
bathroom and the bedroom. I don't know what's been removed from the rest of it, and there should be nothing but
my stuff, such as it is. And the gaps will be be filled in on Friday, as I crawl into the arms of love...
Goddamnit! Is the bad weather specifically centering on Maddy's location, or what? I know, I know, she can
handle it, but jeez...
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