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Thursday, 10 February 2011 (last breath) 7:54am Rather than our usual interval stuff on the treadmills and yellow-and-gray machines, Yvette and I took over the Wellness Room (where I used to regularly go for Damiel's abs class) and did a two-person bootcamp. Reminded me in a lot of ways of working with Raphaela, which is one of those feelings that I'm always trying to get back. Even though it's painful at the time, but that just means it's working. Speaking of working, I've been putting off writing this week's Bad Movie Night listing, but considering that we just got a writeup on 7x7 (which, through the controversial miracle of blog aggregation, has also shown up on nbcbayarea.com, celebrifi.com, city.com, and, most oddly, wsj.com—who knew the Wall Street Journal's blog was so desperate for content?), I suppose I should get on with it. 1:23pm The First has just informed me that Steven Soderbergh's documentary about Spalding Gray, And Everything Is Going Fine, opens in San Francisco next Friday at The Kabuki. We're currently planning on going to see it on Monday after next, on President's Day. That's also be the day that what I've been thinking of as The Marta Blackout will be ending. Her mother's coming into town on Wednesday, and since secret cat is secret, I won't get to see Marta again until her mother leaves. We'll no doubt text and email and even chat occasionally, like we did over Christmas, but actually getting together won't be able to happen. It's going to be weird, but I'll be spending that Saturday night with Ilene, which will help. And tonight, Marta and I are going to Ilene's housewarming party. 2:42pm Oh, I sincerely hope this means that top hats for women is finally coming into style, especially since I was too far ahead of the curve in '06. Though it'd be tricky to find one that would fit over the squid now, or at least one that's meant for women. | ||
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Wednesday, 9 February 2011 (don't carry it all) 7:31am We had a substitute at in bootcamp this morning. A nice enough guy, but a bit more testosteronated than I care for (which tends to be the case with young straight men in gyms—they always have so much to prove), plus he kinda threw us into the deep end with a lot of stuff which we'd not only never done before but arguably hadn't even been working toward. Oh well. Changes of pace are good, and I've certainly been getting into much better shape these past few months as my workouts have gotten more varied, but I'm looking foward to the return of our original instructor on Friday. 5:28am From my mom, about "The Last Dog and Pony Show": ...speaking of good, nay, great even, I read your story in Unthology No 1. If this is not the best story you have ever written, it's right up there. Riveting and moving are two words I would use to describe it.Awww. I'll take that, and I do agree that it probably is the best thing I've written so far—certainly the best one that's been published, anyway, and the one that says the most about me. Which would probably horrify some people, but I'm quite happy with it. | ||
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Tuesday, 8 February 2011 (c'mon) 5:19am I'm never not glad to be myself—let's face it, I'm pretty awesome!—but sometimes I'm really glad I'm not certain other people. They just seem so...ragey all the time. That can't be a pleasant way to live, and thankfully, they tend to excise themselves from my lives. It's so much easier when they jump so I don't have to push them. 2:39pm The Star Trek play at The Dark Room has been postponed until September. Which is fine, because I'll be in better shape by then than I would have been in May. | ||
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Monday, 7 February 2011 (something's turning over) 7:35am No gym this morning, being Monday at all. Shower then food then coffee then work work work and then squidtightening tonight. 11:45am From the marketing guy: Don't know if I've told you lately or not but ... I love reading your stuff ...I think you're the only person I know who has ever used the word syzygy.So, I'm taking that to be a good sign. I haven't gotten my first check yet, but by all accounts, that's not uncommon with remote contractors such as myself, especially since they only got my first invoice last Monday, but I'm still a little nervous all the same—I'm not really going to believe any of this is for real (even though the stuff I'm writing is going live until I actually get paid. Until then...I mean, if it's a scam, it seems like a lot of work to go through on their part just to get copy, but, well, confidence games are nothing if not a lot of work. On both sides. But that's not what this is, I'm sure, and in the meantime I'm choosing to look at it as job security. 8:11pm The squid is tightened. | ||
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Sunday, 6 February 2011 (nothing but heart) 2:49pm It looks like a very lovely day outside. In fact, by all accounts, it's downright hot. Makes me glad that even with the curtains open and the sun shining in, The Black Light District remains nice and cool. I suppose I should go out into the world, but I don't know that I have anywhere to go, at least not until tonight. 10:31pm Pretty good turnout at Bad Movie Night for Jonah Hex in spite of The Big Game today, and much better than The Twilight Saga: Eclipse last week. And I wore my gunslinger top for the first time in forever, because this is the first time it's fit in forever. | ||
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Saturday, 5 February 2011 (nightingale) 6:01pm When Marta and I finally got of bed this morning (that was so fucking hot), she reblondified my roots, I freshenened the fuschia chunk of my bangs, we relaxed and watching the Rifftrax version of Inception, and finally left the house to do some shopping before I dropped her back off at her place. Already a busy day, and in a few hours I'm picking up Ilene to go to a party. Unlike last week, this one is not only in San Francisco, it's about five blocks away from my house, and though events happen at that house fairly regularly, I haven't been in three years. Is it me, or does time move awfully fucking fast? sometime after midnight Though the party got pretty crowded before long, and Ilene and I only stayed for a couple hours, we managed to find space on a couch, me and her and rotating members of what I'm coming to think of as the Floor Partiers—including Davina and Mouse, neither of whom were at the Floor Party but who did come see me read at Perverts Put Out, so they get major points for that—but mostly me cuddling with Ilene, and briefly with Davina, who wasted no time getting comfortable with me when Ilene got up for some mingling. A few people who've seen me at readings came up and introduced themselves, which was nice, since I'm desperately vain and insecure and need constant reassurance. Good heavens, but I'm sleepy. | ||
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Friday, 4 February 2011 (majesty / magic) 3:21pm Bootcamp this morning, a quick trip to Trader Joe's to restock on hummus (I'm in a phase, it seems), and then not nearly as much productivity as I might have liked. Ugh. Gotta kick myself into a higher gear next week, damnit. This evening, Marta and I are going to The Exit for the third and final week of Sean's show, preceded by dinner at Shalimar. After all, pretty soon we won't be in the Tenderloin on a weekly basis, so we shoudl take advantage of it while we can. Won't be hitting The Power Exchange afterward, though. sometime after midnight Marta met Maddy at the show tonight, and circles converge. (Marta theoretically had the opportunity to meet one of my Exes on Thursday night as well, but the thumping of my heart told me I wasn't ready for it.) | ||
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Thursday, 3 February 2011 (done) 8:51am This morning, instead of our usual interval stuff on the ellipticals and yellow-and-gray machines, Yvonne and I took a spin class. It's been a long time, but I think I picked it up again pretty quickly, even though it wasn't Cally or Figurski teaching the class. Not necessarily something I want to start doing on a regular basis again, though. I'm far too needy for that. Came home, showered, dressed, ate, then took Phoebe to the mechanic to get her front tires replaced. Evidently it's going to take until lunchtime at the earliest, so I just walked back home. Lookit me, gettin' more exercise! And speaking more, Phoebe's by no means done with her necessary matinenance. She'll still need her back tires replaced, not to mention the back brakes need the same work as the front ones got a few weeks ago. Eventually. 5:14pm Bonus Marta time: she's asked me to go with her to After Dark at The Exploratorium with her tonight. And so I shall. 7:34pm Good heavens, I am not even remotely hip enough for this. But I seldom am. sometime after midnight I think the little chill-out tent at the top of the Tactile Dome may well be my new favorite place in San Francisco, at least for illicit snogging. When other people crawled into the room, Marta would usually lean back as we waited for them to move along, but once they did, she was back on top of me. It was quite delicious. | ||
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Wednesday, 2 February 2011 (witches) 9:28am Brutal bootcamp this morning. I often feel like I'm not working as hard as I should, since halfway through class I'm so beat I can only manage a few of whatever I'm doing at any given moment before I have to rest for a few seconds. Which just means that I am working hard, I think. Okay, time to get to work. I just moved Perdita from the bedroom into the living room, onto her box below the window, where she promptly fell back to sleep. If I'm going to work from home, then by god, I'm going to have my cat within petting distance. It's only right. 7:18pm Enh. You're going to lose a few along the way, y'know? No big whoop. Ususally it means you didn't need them in the first place. | ||
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Tuesday, 1 February 2011 (you see everything) 8:33am And then it pours—another writeup, this time at the blog The New Civil Rights Movement, the second part of what will presumably be a six-part review of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. And this one is particularly disclaimer-heavy, starting with a bold and italicized warning: Author's Note: This review includes the discussion of an anti-trans pejorative word that is used in a positive, reclaimed way within queer literature. If you find such words emotionally triggering, please skip this post.Fair enough. I bet I know what the word is! Then the first proper paragraph: When I reviewed part one of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (GO:TNG), I tried to briefly capture the essence of each essay. Part two of this superb anthology, titled "Being reconfigured is not the same as being reimagined," contains twelve essays and an interlude, and in the interest of doing justice to the collection as a whole, I will not attempt to review each. The essays I discuss here aren't "the best," just the ones that spoke most strongly to me in terms of reflecting or questioning my own experience of gender.I think I startled Perdita with my laughter when I read that. (I already knew my piece was one of the essays in question, because my picture's on the page, and, what? I'm going to pretend I don't have a Google Alert or three set up? C'mon.) Seriously, I love that disclaimer so much. Some people would probably be offended by it, but hell, I know my essay ain't the best in the book, or even of the twelve essays in that part. It's not meant to be, and quite frankly, I find it much more meaningful that the reviewer found something in my essay that spoke to them in spite of whatever qualities it may lack. Anywho: The section opens with "The Big Reveal" by Sherilyn Connelly, a piece that looks at her validation through the one media outlet that represents women like her: she-male porn. While "she-male" can be used as a slur against trans women, it's also recognized by some as one sex/gender identity under the broad umbrella of "transgender," as well as being a category of pornography where the women have intact penises. As Sherilyn notes, "I've never seen a porn movie in which the transsexual is hurt of killed as a result of her secret being revelaed. It has happened on more than one occasion in 'respectable' mainstream movies...I'll take being fetishized as a sex object over being assaulted or killed as an unnatural freak."I like that, and again, I would rather my work be called "honest" than "the best," because honesty is what I strive for. Hell, that's all I got. Obviously she-male is the dangerous word, and it's even parenthetically disclaimed in the previous review as "the term Connelly prefers"—which is not entirely true, but I can hardly blame anybody for not knowing that. I'm also curious to see what'll happens when they get to Shawna Virago's essay, which she not only had the chutzpah to title "She-Male Rising," but in which she openly claims the word as her identity. The original draft of the essay that I submitted didn't use the phrase "she-male porn" at all, but rather "tranny porn," because that's how I tend to think of it in my head, that place where all my words come from. Indeed, there were just shy of two dozen uses of the word "tranny," which, again, is the language that I tend to use in my head and in casual conversation around people who aren't likely to get all Donald-Sutherland-in-Body-Snatchers on me about using a word which appeals to me aesthetically but is now apparently the worst slur in the history of ever. (Holy cow, am I so very glad glad that I'm nobody's idea of an icon or hero or a role model and thus don't have to deal with the enormous levels of static and backlash and fist-shaking WHY U NO? that Kate Bornstein gets hurled at her. No freakin' thank you.) Even when I read the original version of the essay in 2007 at The Penis Issue, with the nearly Tourette-like usage of "tranny" intact, nobody came up to me afterwards and asked me why I hate trans people, which I obviously must becuase I used that word. In any event, when the contributors were given a chance to make a final set of edits to our pieces, I decided that the essay being pro-porn was going to be off-putting enough to the target audience, and I should make the concession and just remove the word. And it was entirely my decision, I might add—either Kate nor Bear said anything to me about it. Since I love huge blocks of slightly indented gray text, here are the edits I submitted: "I encountered the clip on a tranny porn compilation tape from the mid-nineties with the painfully unimaginative name The Best of Both Worlds."I was deliberate in each replacement, making certain "shemale" is only used in the porn context, and never to describe myself or anyone else who isn't involved in the porn world. (I also don't hyphenate it, but's neither here nor there.) And the fact of the matter is, as I hint at in the edits, for a good long while—and certainly in the nineties, the period the essay mostly covers—the genre was almost primarily referred to as shemale. It is what it is, and for me, part of not being afraid to discuss hese things in print is not being afraid of the words themselves. The above edits spanned three pages of a Word doc, but due to what was most like a clerical error (understandable considering that they had to deal with a gazillion sniggly edits for fifty-odd pieces, only the first two pages were actually implemented. From "tranny of Latin American extraction" onward, the original language remains in the published book. Such is the publishing biz, and in truth the only thing that bothers me is the misspelling of "frakking," especially since I'd only recently come to terms with the fact that the word is spelled "frak," not "frack." (But at least it's not "frakin,'" which annoys me no end.) I expect that anyone who'd actually made it that far into the essay, not having been put off by the overall tone or the rather graphic description of a sex scene that starts the piece—which I'm rather amazed that Kate and Bear let me keep—would probably be sufficently inured by the time "tranny" appears two-thirds of the way through. Anyhow. Yay reviews, and even without them, dig me, I'm published! I still take joy in that simple fact, and I hope I always do. Work now, and this evening I'm picking up Marta from West Portal, which is how we do it on Tuesdays now. | ||
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