Sherilyn Connelly > Diary > January 11 - 20, 2006



11/10/05
My Face for the World to See (Part II):
The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly
a fiction


January 11 - 20, 2006

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Friday, 20 January 2006 (who will stand alone)
7:10am


Though it may not be worse, my health has not improved. I'm going to work today because I kinda have to—both Officer Dave and Sister Edith will be out of the office, and somebody in Production needs to be working the phones, as it were—and am keeping my reblondification appointment at the cosmetology school tonight. Hell, wouldn't be the first time I've gotten my hair done while sick; I'm pretty sure I've irradiated both Miguel and Anodyne in the past. But I'm really beginning to have my doubts about the Cotillion tomorrow. I really want to do go and perform, but the simple fact is, my body may not be up for it. The piece requires an anger and a presence which feels beyond me right now, and if I can't give my all for a crowd of that size, there's hardly much point in doing it in the first place. While my name will be in the program (including, I am promised, the correct name of the piece), I'm not anywhere in the advertising, it's not like anyone will be greatly disappointed if I'm not there. They'd just get to leave five minutes earlier, and everybody likes that.

Then again, one of my favorite REM bootlegs (84/9/26, Duke University, often titled Gone Like Kohoutek) starts with an obviously stuffed-up Michael Stipe announcing i've got a head cold, so you can expect a less than perfect performance tonight. He goes on to do a damn good job, especially considering the cirumstances, and he was on stage for a lot longer than five minutes. (Okay, I've been told I have three minutes max, but who's counting?) If Michael can do it, I can do it.

3:21pm

Sincerest form of flattery, my pasty white ass: those rat-bastards at the EndUp are totally ripping off my first chapbook for their new club. I oughta sue.

I found a flyer for it on the way back from an office lunch outing, the second of my two workdays this week. We went to a restuarant which was pretty lousy, but at least has a name which amuses me because I keep thinking it's Tres Savages. Their Bloody Mary was weak—I had to put in a bunch of hot sauce to give it any kick, and it still wasn't half as good as The Orbit Room's—nor did it have a salted rim as promised. Maybe this comes from working in gay pr0n, but I hate it when a rim isn't as described.

sometime after midnight

The reblondification experiment at the San Francisco Institute of Esthetics and Cosmetology was a quite a success. My local salon does a good job, as did both Taos and Maddy, but this is without a doubt the best it's looked, more platinummy than ever. I had my doubts in the beginning, as one of the Certified Instructors (but not the student doing the actual work) scolded me for the length of my roots, saying I shouldn't have waited so long. Well, la de da. Things improved considerably after that. It was extremely reasonable at forty bucks, especially considering that all I had to do was sit back and occasionally read, not to mention there's always something very sensual about having a pretty girl work on your hair. Miguel was great (and was an early advocate of me going blonde—I really need to track him down), but I didn't enjoy his hands in my hair nearly as much as Anodyne's, y'know? At one point, there were three girls working on my hair at the same time. Oh my yes. In any event, they didn't have time to trim the bottom, and the remnants of the old color are a bit more jarring that usual. I'm hoping I'll be able to do a walk-in on my salon tomorrow morning to get that taken care of, before the Cotillion rehearsal.

After work, we returned to the lousy restaurant at which we'd had lunch to give their tequila bar a shot (no pun intended). Both trips were for our Director of Marketing, she whose pass I used to get into MacWorld last week, as today was her last day. I lasted through a couple of small margaritas before I had to leave for my hair appointment. When things happen, they all happen at once (I am going to be able to do both The Gong Show and Karla's gig, yay); after the bar, my coworkers went on to the Mitchell Brothers' O'Farrell Theater for some farewell lapdances. The O'Farrell was once a client of ours, so they were going to get in free. Even if I didn't have a prior commitment, I probably still wouldn't have joined them for health reasons. A bummer all the same.

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Thursday, 19 January 2006 (unspoken language)
10:56am


Home again, today, in hopes of not getting worse.

At the Waddell Clinic on Tuesday night, it occurred to me that going blonde has been not unlike transitioning: a slow process which requires no small amount of patience, gradual and deliberate, and when the line has been crossed you don't even entirely realize it. hey! i'm blonde! It's weird how many people who've seen me on and off since the peroximent began are now commenting as though it happened overnight. One of the nurses did so, and also mentioned that she's seen my name on the Squidlist. I'm often uncomfortable when confronted with my own microcelebrity, which is ironic considering how sad I'll be when it goes away. I'm ultimately a shy person at heart, perhaps.

Tuedays at Waddell are like the opposite of what you'll find in, say, the TGSF crowd. It feels important to move in both worlds. (Y'know, it's only "whining" if you're standing in a line complaining about having to stand in lines. Yeah, I hate it too, but I don't see the point in making everyone else deal with my displeasure.) There were some live ones on this particular rainy night. Waterlogged sparks flew. (Prayer, the last refuge of the angry tard. Among others.) We make such a broad swath through humanity.

Makes me think of the tranny print personals that state clearly via repetition that they are of European descent and fiercely proud of it, and only like-blooded individuals need apply. I'll never get that. I mean, I understand having preferences, but there's something so bizarre to me about bringing racial pride/hatred into a kinky personal ad. i may be a submissive cd sissy bottom, but at least i'm not a miscegenationist! Maybe it allows them to convince themselves that have some standards, some pride, in spite of their horribly degrading kink, a thing which they...can't...stop...doing.

Part of the Waddell ritual I've always hated is the weigh-in. Do I need to know much much poundage I've put on lately? No, I really don't. Evidently my endoc agreed, because she let me leapfrog over that particular step. She said she had a few people in line front of me who tend to take a while, but I'm usually pretty quick, so she decided to see me first. That's privilege of some sort, I suppose. The numbers from the last blood test look good, and more importantly she said I look healthy, which I found slightly ironic considering I could already feel the cold creeping up on me.

Based on how I described my sex life over the past year, she decided that I didn't need to take an HIV or Hep-C test (since I'd been negative last time), though I'm getting tested for Syphilis again because of the relative simplicity of curing it. She also said that my increased alcohol consumption doesn't pose any particular threat to my hormone intake, since I drink maybe once a week at the most. Given my personality, I'd pretty much have to start binge-drinking (and binge-fucking) to put myself at serious risk, and if either was likely to happen, it would have started by now.

We're keeping my hormone levels the same as they are, which lead to the subject of Kaiser, at which I'll start being insured very soon. (Took them long enough, seeing as how I submitted the application in early November.) She informed me that they will soon be getting an SRS surgeon. They'll primarily be for City and UCSF employees, but after that...she slipped me the name of the surgeon in a very hush-hush manner, and suggested I talk to my Kaiser doc (whoever they end up being) about a referral.

What a bizarre thought. I've never ruled out the thought of surgery, but never really expected it to happen, and have always counted myself fortunate that I'm wired in such a manner that it isn't a big deal. Desperately wanting something so tricky and expensive to obtain is painful, sometimes unbearably so, and simply transitioning without surgery is tricky and expensive enough as it is. There are some who are proud of their pre- or non-op status, and that's fine, but I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it. It's just how I am, and if it's how I am for the rest of my life, so be it. But if I can take that next step, I will. It does feel like the right thing to do.

If I am able to pursue SRS—and insurance coverage is the only way it's likely to happen—then I sincerely hope that nobody ever asks me beforehand if I've "thought it through." Or, worse, refers to it as "the point of no return." Ugh. I will kick them square in the nuts, regardless of their gender status, surgical or otherwise.

1:09pm

And then there was the trip home yesterday.

Left work around noon, and as soon as I stepped outside, it began to sprinkle. Halfway to the train it was actively raining (possibly with small hail), and so windy that my umbrella inverted itself. By the time I hit the Muni stop the rain had died out again, and it was relatively calm for the next fifteen minutes as I waited under shelter for a train.

Unfortunately, going straight home was not an option. First, I had to stop by the Public Utilities Commission to pay my portion of the water bill. It's right off of Civic Center Station, but I can never remember which exit, and I invariably choose the wrong one. This was no exception. Standing by the foot of the stairs was a small man. As I walked by, I noticed that he turned to watch me. As I ascended the stairs, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that he was still looking at me. I gave him my best what the hell are you looking at? sneer, which admittedly had always been more Maddy's specialty than mine.

So I walked down the street a little, paid my bill, and had a decision to make. I knew another N was coming along in a few minutes, and if I headed back down now, I could catch it. Problem was, my stomach was not happy. Part of the illness was a near-constant intestinal percolation. I simply didn't dare getting right onto a train, when there was no telling when I'd be able to hit a public restroom. So, I decided to hit the Main Library, which was across and down the block.

I entered the Grove side of the Library, and stopped at the handicapped ramp leading to the bottom floor. As I was putting my discman in my bag, I felt something touch my lower back, a slight poke. I looked up and saw the small man from the muni station walking past. Motherfucker touched me. Ew, ew, ew! Worse than that, he almost certainly followed me in there. Well, okay, I figured it could be a coincidence. Though that still doesn't excuse the touching. Assuming he touched me at all. How did I know I didn't imagine it? My head was not at its best.

I briefly considered using the downstairs restroom, but decided that would allow him to corner me (assuming he was, in fact, following me), so I started walking upstairs. I tend to prefer the restrooms on the third and fourth floors anyway, since they're more isolated and as such get less traffic. Between the second and third floors I looked down, and yep, there he was, walking up the stairs, looking at me.

I made my way to the restroom, and when I sat down in the stall, I realized how freaked out I was. My breath was hard and long, made worse by the fact that I was congested with a sore throat and (though I wasn't sure of this at the time) a slight fever. Fuck. Maybe I lost him, yeah? Maybe if I stayed in there long enough...

But, no. I had to keep moving, after attending to business. I left the restroom, half-expecting him to be right outside the door. What the hell was his deal? Did he interpret my prior eye contact as an invitation to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse (tonight, on Barnaby Jones!) which would end with me giving him a blowjob in the stacks? I decided to quit blaming the victim. He was following—stalking—me, and had no right. Walking towards the fiction section, I got out my cell phone and started a text-message, then decided against it. What good would it do to tell Vash and Maddy that I was being stalked in the library? I considered asking a librarian to contact security, and what I really wanted to do was turn and confront him, make a scene, made sure he understood that what he was doing was not okay. But the energy level just wasn't there. I couldn't raise my voice if I wanted to. Why did this sort of thing have to happen when I was incapacitated? I was reminded of the wannabe-punker kids who harassed Maddy and I on the bus while we were on acid, which I have at least managed to turn into a fairly crowd-pleasing story.

He continued to follow at a (disrespectful) distance as I went through parts of the Library I didn't know existed. I stopped a few times in hopes of hiding, but before long I was afraid he'd take it as an invitation to actually approach me. Finally, I decided to go for it. I headed straight downstairs, outside, into the muni station, and took the first outbound train that came along, just to get away from there. He did not follow.

The rest of the trip home was not so great, either, but it was sans stalker, so I counted it as an improvement.

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Wednesday, 18 January 2006 (surf's up)
5:02pm


Home, sick, coughing and sneezing with a slight fever. I suspect all the damp has finally caught up with me. Left work at noon, didn't get here until three. Some bad things happened in the journey, including a minor stalking incident. But I'm home now, and everything's okay. Right? Right. Vash offered to make a soup-and-meds run for me, but I declined. If she worked anywhere nearby or lived in the City I might have accepted, but otherwise it felt too far out of her way to me. Because that's how I am. Besides, I don't want her to catch whatever I have.

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Tuesday, 17 January 2006 (your own game)
4:49pm


For the record, my position on the whole JT LeRoy flapdoodle can be summed up in one word: "Eh." Okay, that's not true. It's actually two words: "Eh. Whatever." As scandals go it feels pretty mild to me, and it didn't even involve allegations about Southern California poets and burlap sacks. (Not that I was there, of course, so I have no idea if it actually happened. I never personally witnessed the abuse Maddy suffered at the hands of her ex-husband, either.) Maybe it was all a hoax, but at least I got a good reading out of it, and at City frackin' Lights no less. I'm not taking the revelations personally and don't feel there's any egg on my face. Then again, I never got any closer to JT than a couple emails around the time of the reading:
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:58:04 +0000
From: JT LeRoy
To: sherilyn@sfgoth.com>
Subject: RE: City Lights reading on Tuesday 11/23
Thanks, Sherilyn. Glad ya like the site! How'd the reading go in your opinion? I was sick, chills and everything, couldn't go. But I heard you were great!!! Whcih passage did ya read? JT
I've never been able to quite figure out why someone whose legend is based partially around not appearing at their own readings would bother to make that particular excuse, but sure, okay. Frankly, I'm highly amused that the only reference to the controversy on the official site is a blurb for the timely revival of Mattilda's play. Fucking brilliant. Whoever JT is or isn't, they've (re?)earned a bit of my respect for that one.

10:31pm

It's a good thing that it's clearly posted that assaulting a muni driver is a felony, because I was coming seriously close to it on the way home tonight. The fact that I'm getting sick doesn't help. Indeed, it's not going to help a damn thing.

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Monday, 16 January 2006 (getting along without)
7:01pm


Among many other very productive things, I finally watched The Devil's Rejects. I liked it, and I'm glad it didn't take a left turn into a monster movie in the third act like House of 1,000 Corpses.

Friday night Vash's writing group featured at the Queer Open Mic, and on Saturday night we went to a benefit for Heather MacAllister at the Center for Sex and Culture. Then, of course, Bad Movie Night yesterday. It was a good weekend.

10:52pm

Karla asked me tonight if I'd like to be in a Satanic Church event at Edinburgh Castle next month. I said yes, of course, but now that I'm actually looking at my calendar, I see that I'm already booked for The Gong Show Live that night. I can probably still do both, especially if her event runs past ten, and I suspect it will. Anyway, I'd like to think it's a sign of life lived well to even have scheduling issues like this.

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Sunday, 15 January 2006 ('til i die)
12:02pm


Already feeling hopped on Penguin Mints, during a break from class I went to the Starbucks next door to get a mocha. Stims!

1:44pm

Friday afternoon, my supervisor Officer Dave gave me his MacWorld pass and asked me if I wanted to check it out. I'd just finished eating lunch, so I said yes. What else was I going to do at two in the afternoon on a Friday? One problem was, it had his name on it. He assured me that they didn't check IDs. The other problem was, well, it had his name on it, made worse by a large M in the upper right corner, which I perceived (hypersensitively and altogether inaccurately) as meaning "male". Um, no. He suggested I ask our Director of Marketing for hers, and she was more than happy to let me use it. Loathe as I am to admit it, people would probably say that I look more likely to have a first name of "Dave" than a last name of "Patel" but it's a chance I happily took. I decided that in the unlikely event that anyone pointed out that I don't look like a Patel, and I'd start shouting about about cultural insensitivity.

Nobody asked, though I certainly got my share of doubletakes and overlong glances, probably owing to the fact that I was a wearing a slipdress and black stockings (with boots, natch), and my hair was in pigtails. One fellow stopped dead in his tracks and actually tilted his head in what looked more like shock than anything else, and continued to engage in nudge-and-nod with his wife until I was out of earshot. Hey, it's how I'd dressed for the day, and even if I had a change of clothes, I wasn't going to change clothes to more like a regular attendee and less like entertainment for the executives.

MacWorld was very, very big, very crowded, and mostly focused on stuff which meant nothing to me, as I do not own an iPod, and though my laptop is a Mac G3, I prefer Windows. In that respect, I almost felt like a spy, like I was being deceitful on more levels than anyone realized. Rather fun, actually.

I was back in the office around a quarter past three, and barely an hour later, Officer Dave asked me if I wanted to join him and some others for drinks at a sports bar around the corner. I was strongly considering going home on a really stupid errand to solve a minor fashion crisis (in spite of the fact that I'd have to turn right back around to get to the Queer Open Mic on time), so I declined. Shortly after they left I realized that I'd made a serious error in judgement—it's bothered me a bit lately that I never get invited to their extra-curricular gatherings, and yet what do I do when I am invited? Twit. So, I found myself drinking rum and coke (all I could think to order, it being Vash's regular libation) at half past four with my boss(es). I really do love my job, even if I don't always answer questions correctly.

sometime after midnight

One of the best Bad Movie Nights yet, Gigli with streaking and fisting technique demonstrations and nearly non-stop laughter and, one can only hope, the slight stupidification of all present. But god, I hate driving stoned.

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Saturday, 14 January 2006 (a cork in the ocean)
3:30pm


Five and half hours into the first of two eight-hour days of the Flash I class at the BAVC. Whee.

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Thursday, 12 January 2006 (seeming like it)
9:55am


My commuting misadaventres continued yesterday. I left work at five to hook up with Vash; the timing was going to be tricky, as we were planning to catch a 6:30 showing of Good Night, and Good Luck at the Parkway. First there was a ten minute delay eastbound on BART, and the trains that were coming through were packed. Finally, a Fremont train came along, and much to my surprise, I was able to get a seat. So far, so not too bad.

Until...as those of you who ride BART with any kind of regularity know, if you're going from San Francisco to Oakland, the words you do not want to hear are "Next Stop, Fruitvale." It means that you've gotten on the wrong goddamned train. In my case, it means that I made the exact same mistake as the last time I took BART out there. Not a brain in my head sometimes. It made me feel a little better to know that I wasn't the only person who didn't know the difference between "Richmond" and "Fremont," as another woman got off a few paces ahead of me and made the exact same trek downstairs, across the ground floor and back up the escalator to the other track.

Between my pinheadedness and the long lines outside the Parkway (that's two-for-one night for ya), the movie had already been playing for ten minutes by the time we sat down. Alas. It was still really damned good, though I'm a sucker for period pieces about the media. Afterwards, we ate raw fish and rice at the newly opened Samurai Sushi Boat on Grand, then went back to Wonderland and listened to Liberace records.

Meanwhile, Bad Movie Night has received the promotional love in the current SF Weekly:

This Movie Sucks
By Michael Leaverton
The reviews came as if through a bullhorn: The San Francisco Chronicle called it the worst of the decade, the Wall Street Journal called it the worst of the century, and the New York Times announced it had the "lamest dialogue ever committed to film" (although Roger Ebert countered that "some scenes ... are really very good," which is nicely contrarian). I'm talking about Gigli, and needless to say I haven't seen the fucking thing. But now you can watch the spectacle that changed the fortunes of two very special celebrities in a tiny temple devoted (at least every Sunday) to the bad. The Dark Room Theater's "Bad Movie Night" features a cinematic mistake, funny hosts, free popcorn, and carte blanche to yell at the screen. Mike Spiegelman and Sherilyn Connelly usher in Bennifer's perfect storm. Sundays, 8 p.m., $5. Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission (at 18th St.), San Francisco, 415-401-7987, http://www.darkroomsf.com.
It's in the Guardian, too, if you look deep enough.

3:42pm

Well, great. Now I have to go to Virginia.

4:19pm

Joanna Jet has black hair now. And I wish Ali was around to identify the exact origin of Joanna's Australian accent.

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Wednesday, 11 January 2006 (against my wall)
11:20am


My original plans for last night were to relax at home, probably watching House of 1,000 Corpses and its sequel The Devil's Rejects. (I've never seen the latter, but by her own admission Maddy is borderline obsessed with the movie, and has been dying for me to see it so we can discuss it.) Vash was in major need of cheering up after an already stressful week at work, and she always counts as a better offer, so we arbitrarily decided to go into the Castro for a drink. I've been in a contrary mood lately, so we went to Badlands, that great symbol of the gay community battling itself, the icon of all that is evil within our community.

I'd never been before and I'm not sure if the boycott is still going on or not. I kinda hope it is. I'd like to think we did something that would cause fingers to wag disapprovingly at us. What good is approval? What the hell difference does it make anymore? Why not cross lines, wreck homes, transgress? Besides, I wasn't there when whatever allegedly happened happened, and I certainly wouldn't want to perpetuate a bad situation and do nothing to address the underlying problem, let alone without giving the Badlands people time for a rebuttal. That would just be wrong, it would. So we got our drinks (margarita with salty rim for me, rum and coke for her), found some wallspace, and proceeded to snog. We then returned to the Black Light District, where I showed her something I bought at Target on Saturday.

I could have gotten a lift to work with Vash this morning. She left at half past five, though, so I decided to sleep until seven. Normally, I take the N line from 48th and Judah to 4th and Townsend, terminal stop to terminal stop, ending a couple blocks from my office. Can't beat that for convenience. Instead, my commute went like this: 48 bus to Judah; N line to 19th and Judah, where we were kicked off because of some sort of accident further ahead; crowded, smelly shuttle bus to Church and Market; F-Line to 4th and Market; walked the rest of the way. Whee. That'll teach me to go to Badlands, huh?

1:56pm

To celebrate the last day or our soon-to-be-former resident bear, my department went to lunch at restaurant literally around the corner called Koh Samui, affectionately known around the office as Monkey Thai. Either I never used the restroom the last few times I've been there, or they've recently redecorated. In any event, there's something about the restroom decor that I'm just not grasping. Like, Kiki on Irving has anime stills on their walls, which kinda fits. Sushi restaurant, Japanese movies. Makes sense. Monkey Thai's women's room is lined with four-by-six framed lost pet signs from all over the world. I kid you not. It's just about the most depressing piddling experienece ever, as if they want to make sure nobody stays in there any longer than is necessayr.

Evidently theft is an issue, since they've also put up quite a few signs asking customers not not steal the signs. Please respect us the way we respect you. Do not steal the signs. Ugliness comes from the inside. Truer words have never been spoken, even in more appropriate contexts. Anyway, what I really want to do is switch out one of the existing signs with Ling-Ling's sign, to see how long it lasts. All in the name of science, you understand.

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