After the appointment, I'll probably be heading to the Sea Biscuit to pound out a Medialoper column about the GayVNs, and I still hope to write about Friday night at the Citadel. Unfortunately, they're doing their weekly comedy open mic, so I'll have to bail before eight. Or I could go to the Dark Room, since parking is free today and there's nothing else going on there. Of course, it might be nice to have a day that I'm not there, between play rehearsal and Viva Las Vegas at Bad Movie Night yesterday. Man, that one hurt.

I dreamed that I got involved with Sherilyn Fenn last night. Believe it or not, it's the first time I've ever dreamed about her. Sure, she inspired my name, but I've never been obsessed or super-crushy about her or anything like that. Even the fact that there used to be posters and magazine covers of her up in the apartment had as much to do with The Ex as myself. I'd imagine that she's re-entering a lot of dreams these days what with the renewed interest in the show from the recent box set (which sits on my shelf along with the the original DVD sets of the first two seasons and the imported teevee pilot and of course Fire Walk With Me—keepin' the faith, y'all!), but this was very much the current, post-sexpot-but-still-beautifiul "Boss Hogg's wife in the straight-to-DVD Dukes of Hazzard prequel" Sherilyn Fenn. Which is how I roll anyway.

3:51pm

Turns out parking is not free after all today. Whoops. But I'm at the Dark Room all the same, since it has wi-fi and is relatively quiet and I can stay for as long as I like. And my friends are here, which always helps.

The insurance company was open today, so my new glasses have been ordered. They should arrive by the end of the week. I also got an eye exam, which is how I justify the whole endeavour, and it's a good thing 'cuz my presecription has changed. For the worse, but that's a given. On the plus side, though the pressure (or somesuch) in my eyes is higher than normal, there's no sign yet of the glaucoma which runs in my family. The optometrist told me that while glaucoma cannot be prevented—it'll happen if it wants to happen—if I get an exam every year, that should be enough to detect and treat it early, inasmuch as it can be treated. Which will involve looking for a braille typewriter, I suppose.

Which is not to say that I'm unhappy right now, though I was feeling really weird and not well before the show. Not sick, but anxious beyond reason. I took care of myself as best as I could, slurping down a bowl of a pad thai-esque substance in the Evil Sony Metreon before meeting up with Ilene in the Citizen Cupcake at the top of the Virgin Megastore. (Said Megastore has signs announcing that they've closed the bathrooms, which pretty well eliminates Citizen Cupcake as a place for me to write, at least for any length of time.) While there I had a mocha and gave Ilene the most abridged version of the history behind the potential drama vortex of the show, the reasons why it could be a drama maelstrom so severe it would rip a hole into another dimension. Normally I wouldn't give my writing anywhere near that much credit, but it's astonishing what minor things I've lost friends over, the uncivil behavior and obscure references which are interpreted as "unprompted public attacks." (perhaps we can work together in some professional capacity in the distant future, if some semblance of good will is made, such as an apology. That should be my first tattoo.) I accept that, and I keep on doing what I do anyway and I've learned that being snubbed and hated is far from fatal, but I still get gunshy sometimes. I'm not in it for the controversy. I wonder how much Augusten Burroughs has dealt with.

So with the bloodsugar and caffeine levels suitably raised, we headed to the gallery. It was Ilene's first time at a spoken word event, and she's largely disconnected from the lit/sex scene, which was refreshing for me and surely for the best for her. Ripley was already there when we arrived. We said hello, and didn't speak beyond that. As I knew there would be, there were people with connections to Vash and Dietrich and Maddy, all of whom are referenced to varying degrees in the story. I never considered not reading the story just because of the likelihood of being tattled upon for my slanderI almost discarded it at one point because I didn't feel it was flowing properly, but that's different. Before the show started Ilene and I browsed through the art on the walls, some of which made me sad in its familiarity (she's with me), and in spite of having done pretty much everything I could beforehand to get my energy levels up to snuff, I still felt uneasy, practically dizzy. Johanna showed up as well, and with Ilene and I in the back row, me between them which was just about right. I felt better sitting down, but still extremely uneasy. It wasn't stage fright, though. I knew that once I actually got on stage, I'd be fine.

I went on early, after Robert Lawrence and Carol Queen. I'd specfically requested to be one of the first readers so that Ennui and Jessie could still make it to their prior commitment that evening. Of course, it would involve them showing up at all. I didn't expect them to, and I've gotten pretty good at not taking it personally when someone I'm dating says they'll be at a show of mine then never makes it, especially when they already have plans with someone else. But show up they did, sitting in the front row, Ennui in my field of vision as I read. As I'd suspected, once, I actually got behind the microphone and did my thing, I felt better. Adrenaline cures of a world of ills.

They left when I finished, as did Ripley, who stopped by to say I did a good job. Ennui first waved from a distance, but a couple minutes later she came back in, gave me a nice wet kiss, and told me I was really great. (After Ennui left, Johanna asked if she was the girl from the Undersea Room.) The difference in energies really struck me: one so light, one so dark.

I'll never understand why most readers hate going on first or second, since among other things it means you can relax and enjoy the rest of the show, as I did. One of my favorite moments was watching Ilene's reactions to Charles Gatewood's reading. She's not familiar with him, and was a bit unprepared for his extreme lechery. I think even people in the audience who were familiar with him were taken slightly aback.

Afterward, I told Gatewood I'd like to do a photo shoot with him sometime, and he said I would fit nicely into a his new Fetish Girls series. Sure, I'm game. His models usually have nice bodies with all manner of tattoos and adornment, and aside from the squid and a penis and a very large stomach and disproportionately small breasts for my frame there's really nothing appealing or attractive about my body, but why get caught up in details? I mean, really, can I truly have any indie/counterculture cred until I become one of the eight gazillion people he's photographed? Certainly not. And it requires me to use my real name, which I always do anyway. There's not much point otherwise.

After the show Ilene and I had late-night sushi at Sushi Boom II in the Fillmore, and then I dropped her back off at her place and went home.

Tonight is the Citadel with Ennui.

Friday night, I go to a play party at the Citadel with Ennui and a friend of hers. Saturday afternoon is rehearsal, and Saturday evening I'm going to the GayVNs with Jarboe, on NakedSword's dime. Which is the only way to do it, really.

I lost touch with him after I left Le Video, though when I started doing Bad Movie Night I realized I could make the MST3K dream come to life, sorta. I saw him a few times on the Muni, but never got a chance to speak to him. The opportunity did finally arrive last June, when I saw him sitting outside Java Beach. I approached him and re-introduced myself. Unfortunately, our discussion was cut short because it was the night after my first big squid-related headache, and it suddenly it came back with full force. I spent the next few minutes trying not to betray how much pain I was in. I told him about Bad Movie Night, got his email addy, thanked him and darted off to cringe and cry in my car for a while.

Anyway, I wrote him a few days later, reminding him of our Bad Movie Night conversation, and also asking him what sort of dom work he does. He never did reply. One time some months later when I was writing at the Sea Biscuit I saw him walk by, and I'm pretty sure we made eye contact, but that was that. And now here he was on Monday, sitting next to me, surely not unaware of who I was. (I mean, I'm told I'm difficult to miss and/or forget.) He said nothing, so I said nothing. That ship has sailed, I figure.

The final Drive-Out Theater was Monday night, the centerpiece of which was a fancy dinner at the Water Street Bistro. Though there weren't as many people on the bus as there had been the week before when we riffed on Speed, there were fewer of the regulars and more of a cross section of prominent Mission-hipsterism, including first-and-last-timers like Sadie (in a purple cheongsam, damn her) and Pete Goldie. There also weren't quite as many of us on the mattresses in the back half of the bus, meaning Ennui and Sadie and I had plenty of room to get comfy. On the way out, KrOB showed Jan Svankmajer's Food and Les Blank's Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. (Get it?)

Ennui and I were the last to get off the bus in Petaluma (the bus is no-shoes, and it takes a while to get my boots back on), and by the time we made it into the restaurant most the seats around people we knew were already taken. It's part of the reason why I hate the forced office lunches: I inevitably end up sitting across from my archnemesis or someone equally banal. At least in this case, even though we'd end up with strangers, they were likely to be interesting strangers, as someone on one of these trips must be. (Except for that cranky woman Ennui and I spoke to earlier outside of Ritual, who promptly forgot her names and then got persnickety when we reminded her. I'll bet she was just jealous because we're tall.) In this case, we wound up sharing a table with a pleasant-looking couple, a man who looked perfect for movies about the fifties and a woman who physically resembled Vash in an extremely vague way.

Ennui and I introduced ourselves, and though we weren't sure if we'd ever met in person, the woman recognized my name. Seems she's a writer for the SF Weekly, and in addition to writing up Working for the Weakened a couple years back, she also works on the Repertory listings and is thus partially responsible for Bad Movie Night getting listed every week. So, by some dumb luck, we ended up sitting with one of the few people in creation who regularly reads the blurbs I write for upcoming movies. Heck, she even thinks they're funny, which is of course the whole damned point, considering how much time I spend on the them. I've painted myself into a template which requires me to come up with several jokes per movie, which can get a little tricky at times and certainly accounts for why most of them are lame, but it's gratifying to know that someone appreciates it. A member of the fifth estate, even. And considering how often she probably has to wade through crappy press releases and blurbs and writeups, I'm glad she doesn't find my stuff a chore.

Much like at the pattern party last month, we wound up talking a lot about the Dark Room and Bad Movie Night. I'm narcissistic and careerist enough that I'm always thrilled when someone asks me about my work or my process, but I'm also keenly aware of what a thudding bore that can be to others, which is why I try not to be all let's talk about me and my stuff and how groovy i am! But, when someone else brings it up, it's only polite, yes? Ennui, bless her, takes it all in stride. After all, it's how we met in the first place. (Well, sorta. It's how she first became aware of me, since she's a regular. Technically, we met in Dolores Park during Sadie's Public Display of Affection event last May.) I still felt the need to turn to her at one point and sotto voce at her i'm sorry, but she brought it up. Ennui laughed it off, as she always does. She's well aware of the perils of dating a minor niche-market regional quasi-celebrity such as myself, and is equally fine with the associated perils of me being a memoirist. One of her first girlfriends was a poet who wrote some gnarly stuff about her after their breakup, the sort of thing that would make most people swear off getting involved with another artist, especially an unimaginative one who mines their own life and relationships for material. She knows that she's part of my narrative now, for good or ill, and is unafraid.

The lack of an online menu prevents me listing the exact courses of the meal, but there was a yellow chowdery soup, a salad with goat cheese and beets (the writer eerily observed that I don't like beets, having left most of them untouched), duck confit, and chocolate pot de creme. The wine was a burgundy. Or just Burgundy? Dunno if it's a brand or a generic kind, but it was red, and it was what Ennui chose so I chose it too.

On the ride home, we watched Bob Odenkirk's Melvin Goes to Dinner. (Get it?) The bus got back into town at two in the morning, Chicken John announced that while this was the last run of the current series, there would be more Drive-Out Theaters in the future. Yay. As is our wont, Ennui and I spent most of the trip back (and to) in various states of full-dress cuddle. It doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but there's something about being on the moving bus, under the blankets but fully clothed, Ennui's head on my lap or my head or my head on her lap as movies play and people talk and laugh, that's comfortable and comforting. When we were back at Cassandra at little later in soft Ennui's bed, down to our skivvies under her thick flannel blankets, at rest and the world outside her window as silent as it only gets at the time of night between the closure of the local bars and the opening of the coffeehouse downstairs, I found I just couldn't relax or sleep at all. Oh, I was happy to be with Ennui and feel her body resting on mine and I wasn't looking forward to getting up and going to work a few hours later, but everything was too...still. It was almost unnerving.

While at work on Tuesday, I watched Jeff Garlin's I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. Like Melvin Goes to Dinner, food-related themes notwithstanding, it felt like the kind of movie I would probably make if I wanted to make movies, which I blessedly don't at the moment. (Really, getting my ideas into words is more than enough right now, never mind images.) Perhaps as a rebellion against the excellent meal I'd had on Monday, or perhaps out of curiosity combined with the desire not not get a burrito for a change, before Ten Commandments rehearsal I got food from the Popeye's Chicken. Well, "food," anyway. Allegedly catfish strips, but heaven only know. It was the most singularly unsatisfying meal I've had in a very long time. I almost needed to get a burrito anyway just to cleanse my palette.

No rehearsal tonight. Tomorrow is My Sucky Valentine, when the currents converge. Charles Gatewood has been added to the lineup. The (revised, presumably final) flyer lists the performers in alphabetical order, so my name is right next to Gatewood's. Such a trip.

6:06pm

At the Sea Biscuit for the first time since last Thursday, and feeling a bit more confident about getting some work done. My piece for tomorrow is approaching its final draft, and I think I'm ready to finish the Breaking Up is Harder to Do essay, which is mostly all there except for the conclusion. And then I'll have have to shave off a few hundred words to get it under the three-thousand word limit, but I figure I should let it be as long as it wants to be at first to make sure I don't forget anything important. Which I will, I always do, but I'll have given it my best shot.

I'm not all that thrilled with how the My Sucky Valentine piece is turning out. It feels a little formless, a little lacking in punch. Alas. It'll be what it is.