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8:41am Went pretty well with Raphaela, actually. Moxie trumps sleep dep. So, then. Friday, November 14, 2008. Two months ago. The first night of the new Queer Open Mic was okay. The show itself was great, and it was nice to see Johanna as it always is since she's invariably sweet to me. But I don't feel comfortable in that crowd anymore, not at all. Jarboe was there, and I didn't even get a hug out of her, just a hi from across the room. Fine. Got it. Loud and clear. We went out a couple times, sorta, fooled around a little, and then nothing. The slate is clean. There will be no going backward, dipping into the older well. It's dry to me now, and I'm dead to the people around it. Bunny was there, and she brought a friend. It was good to have them there, and her friend (a cute redhead) seemed to enjoy the show. Unfortunately, they had to leave right after I finished reading, but before the show proper ended. I walked them outside, hoping Bunny would ask me to call or text when the show was done so I could meet up with them. She didn't. Okay, then. There goes that track for the evening. Starting over— Usually I like to linger after a show, both to come down a little and to receive whatever accolades there are to receive. None were forthcoming. Maybe they knew I was reading about things that contributed to my Bad Person status, and I shouldn't be rewarded. Or not. Don't know, and it doesn't matter. I was done, and it was nine in the evening, time to move on. It was a beautiful night, clear with a waning gibbous moon, pleasantly not-chilly. I didn't know what to do with myself, beyond the fact that I didn't want to go home. There was a play in progress at The Dark Room. I hadn't seen it yet and didn't want to arrive in the middle. After that was a comedy show which didn't sound interesting. The Power Exchange? I had no idea if it had officially closed yet, and if it hadn't, it wasn't going to be open for business for another hour or so. Divas? A more intriguing possibility. Haven't been in a while, and I was getting into better shape. That was one of my carrots, going back there and feeling genuinely sexy, as opposed to the automatic object-of-desire status it afforded me simply by being a tranny (Which was nice, I didn't discount that at all, but I wanted more.) So, maybe. Dancing sounded like fun. But where would I put my stuff? I'd have to go back to the office to get my lunchbox, and...bleh. On a whim, I called Sadie. It was unlikely that she'd be home on a Friday, but what the hell. She said she was in fact home, and to come on over. Conveniently, I was all of three minutes away. She was in the middle of making her dinner, a concoction involving okra, kale and brown sweet rice, with various oils and spices and aminos. It smelled wonderful, but I decided not to ask. If she wanted to give me some, she'd offer. Otherwise, I didn't want to eat her food. But she did offer, and it tasted like the greatest thing ever. It was so very much what I needed right then and there. Sadie invited me to come with her later when she headed to Dolores Park to play Capture the Flag for a friend's birthday. Though the game didn't sound like much fun, I wasn't ready to go home, either. What's more, wherever else I went, I would be alone. At least this way I'd be with Sadie. Dolores Park was far from empty on this moonlit night, so much so that Sadie had to call her friends on her phone to find them. They turned out to be a fairly typical-looking group of Mission hipsters, some familar and some not. Among the familar was Isobel, and next to her a girl who was not among the familar, Dyanne. An old, dear friend of Isobel, Dyanne was short with a strawberry-blonde Bettie Page cut and an oversized A&W hoodie. Our eyes locked. She told me she liked my look, which consisted of my boots, white-and-black stripeys (a pair which hasn't fit me in years), a black half-slip, my Final Girl tank top (also hadn't fit in years, and felt very important to wear at the Queer Open Mic), a long leather jacket, and a striped scarf. Naturally, I returned the compliment. She assured me the hoodie was a loaner. We movied next to each to continue chatting. I got the sense that her and I were going to be spending the rest of the evening together. Probably just talking, but still. We'd probably have a lot to talk about. It was a look in her eyes, and probably mine as well. you, you're interesting. tell me things. I'm not sure what conversational thread to lead to it, but as we walked up the hill toward Church Street, I told her about Rhiannon and I going on rides at the carnival we stumbed across on her birthday in June, and how I couldn't really enjoy myself because I'd left my bag on the ground, and having recently watched the first season of Carnivale with Ilene, I was convinced it would be stolen by an unscrupulous carny. When I mentioned Carnivale, Dyanne stopped in her tracks, put her hand over her heart and said: oh my god, i love that show so much! Oh, this was going to work out just fine. She told me was from Pittsburgh, where she had a production company which made extremely gory horror movies, and had only been in San Francisco for a couple days but was loving it so far. Since Dyanne was new and enjoying so many of my City's little oddities I took her to the Golden Fire Hydrant at 20th and Church. She thought it was brilliant—which it is—and took several pictures of me sitting next to it. One of them she took by accident, but insisted it was the best one: see? look at your smile in it. that's so great. We sat together on the sidewalk next to the hydrant (which seemed like a perfectly normal place to sit late at night) and talked for at least an hour, enjoying the wonderful view of the San Francisco skyline, bonding over our mutual love of seventies exploitation films. She seemed amazed at my borderline encyclopedic knowledge of such things. i'm so glad we met, sherilyn. we really connect. We talked about cats and traveling and how much we both wish we could have seen Times Square in its seventies sleaze glory, I told her about kittypr0n and Bad Movie Night and I AM SNOWMISER, I gave her an aural tour of San Francisco theaters, telling her about the Roxie and the Red Vic and especially the Castro, and how cool the 70MM Film Festival is, and she really listens, making strong eye contact. Intoxicating. There had been the some of the most brief, fleeting physical contact, the occasional hand on my arm while laughing, our legs pressing together as we sat on the chilly but tolerable sidewalk.. I also did a pretty good job of hiding my flinch when she mentioned that she has a boyfriend. Of course she does. Isobel called a couple times, and eventually we made our way back down the hill to the rest of the group. On our way down, I was talking about The Dark Room, and mentioned that I'd declined (after briefly accepting) the position of Assistant Director on Star Wars. Dyanne stopped in her tracks, appalled, put her fists on her hips and said: what? why? why wouldn't you want to do? I explained that I just couldn't devote the amount of time and energy necessary for a project which wasn't mine, and in which I'd have no creative input. She nodded and said she understood. We rejoined the party, which was starting to wind down. Dyanne and I managed to miss the Capture The Flag game, which broke neither of our hearts. There was talk of getting together for lunch the next day at Tartine, where Isobel and Venice and I had had our birthday meal back in June. Like when Sadie was making food earlier, I chose not to ask if I could come. I would be invited, or I wouldn't. And if I wasn't invited, then I'd survive, as always. Better than being where I'm not wanted. But Isobel did invite me, and when I said I'd be there, Dyanne smiled and said: oh, good! It was pushing one in the morning, time to scatter. Sadie and I arrived together, so we left together, and Dyanne left with Isobel. Before we parted, Dyanne and I had a good, long hug. Some are better than others. Once we were out of earshot, Sadie asked: what were two doing up there? fucking in the bushes? Nope. Not so much as a kiss. We walked back to Phoebe, and I dropped Sadie in front of her house, as I so often will. She said that she was glad that I'd called her, and that we had the kind of friendship were I felt comfortable calling her out of the blue on a Friday night and joining her for whatever adventure she was going on. I was glad, too, and not just for having met Dyanne. Saturday was beautiful, warmer and with a bluer sky one normally encounters in San Francisco in mid-November. I was the first at Tartine, even though I left the Black Light District kinda late, since I had do some digging through my desk for certain presents for Dyanne. I wanted to give her a kittypr0n bumper sticker, but couldn't find any, so I gave her a kittypr0n flyer instead. I also gave her a Working for the Weakened flyer and my copy of Sleazoid Express. I went back and forth on giving her the book, since it's one of my favorites, but I also knew she'd like it since she's as into that milieu as I am. Besides, what are books for if not to be passed on, especially if you've already read them a few times? Especially if you suspect you'll never see the recipient again. Our table consisted of me, Sadie, Isobel and Dyanne, with her and Imaking a point of sitting next to each other. Not that Sadie and Isobel would have objected anyway. I suspect they were mostly amused by this weird little brief spark between such good friends of theirs. Dyanne was happy to get both the book (unsurprisingly, she'd always wanted to read it) and the kittypr0n flyer, but she seemed especially taken by the Working for the Weakened flyer, saying: we have the same aesthetic! I've long since grown accustomed to the fact that no matter how much effort I put into tiny details in my work (be it my writing or my Bad Movie night blurbs and raphics) odds are nobody is going to notice them, or at least is going to mention it to me if they do notice it. And, as I say, I'm accustomed to it. That's fine. I'm ultimately doing it to please myself, not anybody else, because I'm the only one I know I can please. (Garden Party and all that.) But Dyanne was particularly taken with the level of detail that I put into the back of the flyer, how I made it look like real blood. When I told her that it was real blood, from a forensics picture I found online. (You can find pretty neat stuff when you do a Google Image Search for "blood splatter.") That I went to the trouble to do impressed her all the more, since she's evidently had issue with graphics people in her company who don't realize that a swath of red by itself does not look like blood. She liked the front, too, and I excitedly pointed out to her that my name was the only one which actually had blood on it, a detail which I doubt anyone else ever really noticed but which always made me happy. She kissed me on the cheek. A little later, she observed that I had some of her lipstick on my face, and she wiped it off. I didn't want her to. Lunch was over, and we were breaking back up into our component groups, Dyanne and Isobel going in one direction, Sadie and I going in another. Dyanne and I hugged, longer and harder than the night before, with a few kisses on each other's neck and shoulders for good measure. More affection than I've gotten from anyone since...I don't know. In a while. (I keep thinking April, but that can't be right, can it?) (It's a dry year, so yes, it can be right.) So nice to have that little spark, to have someone actually reciprocate. Even if I never saw her again, it would still be a better turnaround than with, say, Ronnie. Dyanne said that it she isn't able to move to San Francisco, then maybe I can visit her in Pittsburgh. I nodded and smiled and said that yes, maybe I can. But only if I know for sure that...well, it's a long way to go just to be frustrated. It's a long way to go not to be frustrated, for that matter. It's a long way to go, period. But I don't rule anything out lately, nor do I take anything as a given. It was getting close to two in the afternoon. My plans for the afternoon included Tyrol's spin class at four, but Sadie encouraged me to play hooky and stay with her instead, to get a table together at a cafe and write. Which is what we did. It was still a warm and beautiful day, and being with a friend sounded nicer than being in class. So, we got a table at The Marsh Cafe. While we were there, I got an email from Rhonda, informing me of a Munch that evening. A Munch is when a bunch of people in a sex/kink/fetish subculture get together in a relatively public location, usually a restaurant (hence the standard term "Munch") to talk and hang out and generally get to know each other without the pressure of being in a club or play party or other sexually charged setting. This particular Munch was of a group of people whom I'd met via Rhonda at the Folsom Street Fair. They primarily kept in touch online via a chatroom on a certain kink-oriented social networking site, which was why I hadn't really made any inroads with the group since Folsom: I just don't do chatrooms. Direct instant-messaging, sure, all the time, I often get lonely when none of my friends are online, but chatrooms aren't my thing. I have nothing against them, it's a perfectly valid form of socializing for most people, but they just don't work for me. I don't have the patience. I always feel like I can be doing something more productive with my time—writing or reading something else or pushing files around—and as a result I miss most of the conversations and have to keep starting from scratch. No good. My other issue is that I don't chat online with people I don't know in meatspace. It doesn't feel real, and I value reality. This is why even during my brief period of writing about it for Medialoper, I was never tempted to join Second Life. It holds no appeal for me. Anyway, Rhonda also mentioned that a girl I met at Folsom and who'd been asking about me was going to be there. (Why Rhonda never gave her my email address is uncertain, since I gave her permission to do so.) All the more reason, plus Sadie had plans that evening, so I'd be off on my own either way. The thing about walking into a Munch—especially when you get there halfway through, as I did, and especially when you're interesting-looking, as I am—is that you get such a sense of being watched, as I did later thyat evening when I walked into the Ghiradelli Room at the Hotel Whitcomb. At least at the Folsom gathering, which was in the cafe area of Harvest Urban Market, it was in a open public place on the outskirts of the world's biggest fetish street fair. This, on the other hand, was a closed party, and anyone new was going to be scrutinized. Though I was a bit nervous going in, it helps that I'm a performer and am comfortable with being the center of attention. Mostly. As I was being looked at by a few dozen eyes, I looked back, searching for familiar faces, specifically of the girls I'd hung out with at Folsom. I was pretty sure I remembered what they looked like, but it would help if they recognized me first. sherilyn! it's me! This was from a woman with short black hair who'd walked up to me. Since I hadn't expected to see her at all, not to mention I'd never seen her in a well-lit room, it took me a moment to recognize her as Devi from Chez Badunkadunk. Wow. The odds were a bit on the astronomical side, moreso considering that I'd tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with her earlier in the week. And now, here she was. At a Munch. With a guy. Devi said that she hadn't been sure if she should write me back or not. I blinked. What? How did that make sense on any level? She was a little vague as to whether she meant back in April—when the last thing I'd heard from her after she flaked on a date was that she was really busy but that she'd get in touch soon—or my more recent attempts to get in touch with her. She did at least confirm that the email address I had for her was dead while evading the question of whether she'd gotten my text earlier in the week. I decided to drop it. She introduced me to her date, who spent most of the time standing behind her, gripping her arms. Again, though this was a Kinkster munch, there was nothing kinky about the gathering per se. His death-grip on her was insecurity, pure and simple. As she raved about me to him—sherilyn's a great writer, and she performs and does plays—his hold on her tightened, and everything about his body language screamed she's mine, back off! I'll bet that on top of everything else the fact that I was easily a head taller than him didn't help. He was a small, average-looking man, and I was a tall, striking-looking tranny. Meanwhile, all I could think was: wow, i sound like a quite a catch. pity you stopped trying, 'cuz heaven knows i was throwing myself at you. Or, more to the point, throwing myself back at her, since she was plenty enthusiastic in the week after we met. 3/17/08 Why she didn't really try—or, at least, why she suddenly stopped trying—I can't say. Except that losing interest is perfectly natural that I've done the same thing with other people, sparks fade before they really start burning, and sometimes that's just the way it goes. Maybe it didn't help when I told her at the time that my particular damage is that i had a major relationship end around nye, and i had to stop seeing someone else a couple weeks later because she was way way way too obsessive and clingy, so i am a little gunshy right now, and i make no promises and she took it was the warning that it was and responded accordingly. Doesn't matter. Presently, she asked: how are things with your girlfriend? It took me a moment to process the question, and then: oh, ennui? she was never really my girlfriend, but, anyway, we're not seeing each other anymore. that's a shame. she was really beautiful. what happened? It was a question I didn't have an answer for, but I responded anyway: i don't know, really. we kind of drifted apart. she stopped calling and writing, and i stopped calling and writing, and... And? It was something I hadn't quite figured out myself. The guy gripping her arms from behind and staring daggers at me, still worried that I posed a threat to his clear dominance over her, Devi said: well, she was involved with a few people at any given time, right? sure, but that was never a problem. Which is true. That was part of the arrangement from the word go—I'd known Ennui's boyfriend Jack for years before her and I met, after all, and there'd been at least one attempt to set him and I up way back when—so it should have made our relationship more viable, not less. The last few years notwithstanding, I still believe that open relationships are as valid and potentially long-lasting as traditional ones. Statistically, I've seen nothing to suggest otherwise. As far as I'm concerned, they're both doomed to failure because they involve humans, though open relationships are arguably more fragile because of the pressure of societal disapproval. But it didn't last, and from what I'd seen in recent months, whatever space I may have occupied was now being filled by Rob. He was with her at Sadie's birthday party (they arrived a little bit after the show began before I went on, and they left before I read, so it goes), and while looking for pictures from that party I became another dead cat by clicking on a link I knew I shouldn't have and got confirmation of something I'd been suspecting for a while: I wasn't getting invited to their parties anymore. There had been the possibility that neither Ennui nor Edie had thrown any since April, but that seemed unlikely at best, and now I knew. Nothing new under that particular sun, after every breakup I get dropped from invite lists (i got no friends 'cuz they read the paper) as I'm sure everybody does, but considering this was a circle which tended to keep exes close, I was probably considered too...unstable? Needy? Risky? Just not pleasant to have around? All possibilities. My behavior at the party back in April probably clinched it. But this girl is catlike, she lands on her feet, though she also huddles in a corner when she's sick or hurt cries when she's left alone and gets excited when she thinks she hears someone who loves her on the other side of the door. So Ennui and I had our fantastic anniversary date in late May, which I think on some level we probably both knew was also our last , and as last dates went it was a doozy. She left for Europe the next day on a business trip and was gone for all of June, and I didn't see her again until mid-July. She'd been back for well over a week, but it took longer than that for me to decide not to wait for her to call, because as a general rule if I wait for someone to call they never will. We eventually had dinner before Bad Movie Night, she sat up front with me for the last time (and it would be the second to last time she attended Bad Movie Night, though some months later I promised her that if she same came back to the show I wouldn't make her sit up front with me), and we went back to her place where in spite of having had many other restful nights in the past I simply could not get to sleep. I think I may have finally dozed off about an hour before I had to get up again. I really don't know I couldn't relax. Or maybe I know exactly why. Stars have their moment, and then they die. I didn't ask her out again, she didn't ask me out again. The world spun. The office moved. I hit a personal rock bottom and started going to the gym and working with Raphaela, and the summer's song faded to memory. When Jessie left Ennui earlier in the year, I held Ennui as she cried. I wondered if Rob did the same for Ennui when our dissolution was evident. Probably not, since Jessie had broken up with her via a letter which detailed everything she found wrong with Ennui, and that had to hurt. There was nothing like that in our case, and I would never have done such a thing. (It fit Jessie's personality, though. She wasn't mean at all, just...clinical. She may not have even realized how hurtful her letter was.) Our relationship, I realized as I stood talking to Devi, didn't have a definite, jagged end, so much as...the metaphor escaped me. I still think of her, though, especially these days when I get home late and see Orion overhead. Ennui told me once that she didn't care for Orion because it was a winter constellation, so when she was growing up she only saw it in cold weather. And not the lightweight cold like we get around here where water remains in liquid form, but the hardcore Minnesota cold that she moved West to get away from. I have no such negative associations with Orion—I'd never even noticed that it wasn't visible in the warm months, because details like that tend to elude me—and now I have a positive one, thinking of her whenever I see it, of those moments when she let her guard down. There are worse ways to be remembered, I should think. I said to Devi: so, yeah. i stopped calling and she stopped calling and eventually that was that. She replied: well, i'm sorry to hear it. she was very pretty. I thought to myself but didn't say: yes, i know. i'm well aware of how pretty ennui is. you don't have to keep mentioning it, honest. Aloud, I said. in any event, i'm now aggressively single. I laughed uncomfortably and felt like my already questionable conversational skills were starting to leak out of my ears. Whooboy. I was getting goofy. that's a goofy way to put it, isn't it? aggressively. i'm not even sure what that means. I felt myself getting trapped in an Annie Hall loop (oh, yeah? so do you. oh, god, what a...what a dumb thing to say, right? i mean, you say it, "you play well," and right away i have to say you play well. oh, oh...god, annie. well...oh, well...la-de-da, la-de-da, la-la...), made all the stupider a) there was less than no point since Devi was clearly not available, and b) I'd been much cooler the night we met. My savior was in the form of Xiola, the girl I'd met at Folsom who'd been trying to get in touch with me. She tactfully extracted me from the conversation, for which I was grateful—though probably not as grateful as Devi's date, who was on the verge of spraying his territory. I hung out with Xiola and her friend Amanda for the rest of the Munch, which mostly consisted of us wallflowering. The hotel kicked us out at eight, and I decided to join Xiola and a few others on a dinner excursion. Outside the hotel, Devi hugged me, and said (out of earshot of her date): it was so funny to see you again! Uh-huh. it was good to see you again, too. Over dinner at the King of Thai Noodle House (which, sadly, was not doing karaoke that night), Xiola commented that Devi never seemed too comfortable at the Munch, and the guy holding onto her like a trophy didn't help much, either. Xiola added: she was easily the prettiest girl in the room. almost too pretty for our group. I shrugged. There's always someone prettier, and it wasn't a vicious circle I wanted to get into. After dinner Xiola and the others headed to the Citadel. The door price was a bit rich for my blood, the same as what I paid Raphaela for a session, and without the promise of any sort of action it just wasn't worth it. Besides, I had to hit the gym the next morning. (If I can't save my soul, I'll save my body.) I walked back to where I'd parked Phoebe, stopping at the the corner of 8th and Folsom to lean against a garbage can and write in my notebook. I knew I'd lose the words my brain if I didn't. I went to the gym Sunday morning, and had SNOWMISER rehearsal in the afternoon. That evening I was going to have dinner with Laura, and then she would sit next to me at Bad Movie Night. That was the plan, anyway. She was supposed to meet me at The Dark Room at six. When she hadn't arrived by a quarter past, I began to wonder if she wasn't going to show at all. It would simplify things, to be sure. Then I'd know for sure what I already...well, what I already knew for sure. There'd just been too little feedback from her, largely vague or non-existent responses to most of my questions, my attempts to get to know her better by expressing a genuine interest in her as a person. Not that I was bombarding her with questions, but for every three I asked, one would get half-answered. Okay. Get it. But we can still be pals, right? She finally arrived at nearly half past, just as the butterflies in my stomach were reaching critical mass. Unlike at Taste of Rome the month before, she didn't go in for the hug, and I had to initiate it. Okay. We walked to We Be Sushi. Over dinner, I knew it would be our last. There was just no question. We somehow got onto the subject of suicide. (If you're familiar with her work, it's not much of a surprise.) She suggested pills (also not a surprise if you're familiar with her work), and I said that I'd heard good things about the slitting one's wrists in a warm bath, that as killing yourself goes it's the most peaceful way to do it. Suddenly I realized that was the metaphor I'd been lacking the night before. That was how my relationship with Ennui ended, like drifting off in a warm bath. As deaths go, a peaceful, relatively undramatic one. You can't really discuss suicide without bringing up the accompanying self-loathing, and I ruminated that I don't have any truck with it these days. Really, I'm done with self-loathing. It's part of what keeps me from trying to get together with Ripley, in spite of how tempting it is sometimes. It's not to say that she's a bad person, because she isn't (which makes what happened between us all the more tragic, because we should have been so great together, if only a few neurons here and there fired differently), but if I were to do one-eighty back into that unhealthy situation, it would be a form of despair—giving up, forsaking the simple fact that I don't know what'll happen tomorrow. And it's all academic, since she'd surely say no. Indeed, all I knew about tomorrow was that it would not involve Laura. I didn't say that, of course. Nor did I reveal my crush on her. No point. It was the last thing she needed to hear. That just left the rest of the evening. Back at The Dark Room, Laura sat in the front row, engrossed by the pre-show stuff. (The movie was Moonraker, so I put together a bunch of James Bond trailers, because that's my version of cleverness.) It took a little convincing to get her to sit in the front row at all, even though from the beginning of us talking about it at all I was phrasing it as you'll be sitting in the front row next to me, making me laugh. Made it clear enough, I'd hoped. consider this the hint of the century. consider this the slip that brought me to my knees, failed. I was behind the counter, talking to Cesare. He's known about my crush on her for a while, if somewhat abstractly, from certain tweets. So, I pointed her out and told him sotto voce and that she was the girl I'd been crushing out on. He got this look in his eye and said: damn. a hot blonde amazon. well, i'll have to sit on the other side of her and we'll make a sandwich! I bristled and replied: yeah, no, you are REALLY not going to do that. He asked me to repeat myself—I don't think he was challenging me so much as he simply hadn't heard what I said since I was trying to keep my voice down—so I said it again, same inflection. I tried to make it clear that I was deadly fucking serious, that he was not to move in on this girl while I was actively failing with her. The show started. It was supposed be me, Mikl-Em and a guy from a sketch comedy group. He didn't show up—whenever a host flakes, it's inevitably a flakey sketch comedy guy who decides to moonlight at our show, then proceeds to forget about it—and Laura wasn't up to the task, so I asked Cesare to fill in. He'd been sitting in the second row, and when he moved to the front row, Laura started to moved over to make room for him between us. One cockblock, comin' right up! Doing my best to keep the edge of desperation out of my voice, I said to her: no, please stay next to me. Not caring either way, she remained seated next to me. In a couple hours it wouldn't matter. There were two seats between her and Mikl-Em. Though Cesare now had a plausible reason to sit next to her, being a host in the front row and all, he sat next to Mikl-Em instead. I decided to interpret that as him respecting my wishes. My boundaries, even. And I wouldn't have necessarily minded him sitting next to her in normal circumstances—whatever, I'm not the boss of him or anyone else—but his comment earlier had set me on edge. I'm in starvation mode these days, and right or wrong, I get territorial about whatever scraps of nourishment I can find. It was a little thing on Cesare's part, but it meant a lot to me. I haven't heard from Devi or Laura in the ensuing two months, nor do I expect to. Dyanne and I have emailed a little bit, but unless she moves to San Francisco there's not much there, and even if she does, there's not likely to be much there. Xiola and I have dinner plans this Friday, and that'll go how it goes. 1:21pm I took today off from work with the intention of doing something for/during the Inauguration. Ended up not happening that way at all, which is no great loss. I'm kinda ready for the all the whole process to be over, quite frankly. I'm now at The Dark Room, both because it's where I go when going to my office to write isn't an option, and because I brought in my increasingly sluggish desktop computer so Jim can nuke it and reinstall Windows XP. Hopefully. It might be a lost cause, since it was based on an old motherboard which Dana kindly provided four years ago, so it's way past its prime now. I mostly just use it as piracy workhorse these days, for ripping and burning DVDs and downloading music. Arrrr. Meanwhile, the next AIRspace dates at the garage have been announced as March 7, 14 and 21. Time to get cracking. | ||
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Monday, 19 January 2009 (knowing what i know) 10:49am Excellent Bad Movie Night last night. We got a big crowd for The Incredible Hulk, though I suspect the fact that we're an SF Sketchfest venue is helping, too, since that's totally our audience. Also attending was a gorgeous tranny I'd met at The Power Exchange two years ago and haven't seen since. She contacted me on Facebook last week and said she was in town, and I suggested we get together, but I wasn't holding my breath. Nor did I recognize her right off the bat when she came up to me before the show started last night, because in the intervening two years she's grown her own head of black hair (she was wearing a red wig when we met) and had some very successful facial work done. When she came up to me after the show, pushed me against the bar and started making out with me, then I knew for sure it was her. She was a little drunk. We went with a friend of hers to Divas from there, mostly talking (turns out she's a big fan of my writing) with a bit of snogging mixed in as she got progressively schnookered. Unfortunately, she kinda disappeared towards the end of the evening—off to compulsively pursue the self-destructive lifestyle which she drunkenly assured me was her destiny—and by the time Divas closed she was nowhere to be found. Things last as long as they last, and at the peak we reach to cue the strings. 5:18pm Ugh. Sleep dep. I only got five hours last night, and I'm feeling it. Working with Raphaela this evening is going to be especially tough. | ||
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Sunday, 18 January 2009 (like a loyal whore) 4:22pm i always told you i'd get your work on the walls, baby. it just took a while. 11:12pm Lit groupies are an extremely rare breed. sometime after midnight Somebody will meet Perdita eventually, but it was not to be tonight. | ||
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Saturday, 17 January 2009 (shedding off one more layer of skin) 2:58pm Label/Receipt Number: 7008 1300 0001 3722 7825Sweet. The Blue Mountain Center got my application, and my Albee Foundation application is pretty much good to go once I get the second letter of recommendation. The third person I asked said yes, so I'm not too worried. Next, then, is applying for the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, which I have the best chance of getting into and would be the most helpful career-wise. Important consideration, that. 7:38pm What I ended up doing with myself is what I do with myself on most Saturdays: worked out at the gym (this is the only way it works), and spent most of the rest of the day at the office, writing. I also put together the preshow material for tomorrow's Bad Movie Night. In a little while, I'm going to Pete and Sarah's place to watch last night's Battlestar Galactica. No complaints. | ||
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Friday, 16 January 2009 (under every rock) 3:30pm Raphaela did my measurements this morning.
My body fat hasn't decreased, but whatever, because down ten percent after six months is still pretty good, especially post-holidays and considering how many bruises I have from wagon-falls. The "not eating after seven" thing, mostly. I still try to eat dinner before then if possible, but if I get home and there's any spring mix and Annie's Natural Goddess Dressing in the house—and considering that my only roommate is Perdita and I do all the shopping, it's kinda all on me—then I'm doomed. I also had dairy yogurt earlier this week because Other Avenues (at which I've become a discount-card-carrying regular again) was out of the soy kind and I didn't trust my stomach to handle anything other than yogurt, and I guess the other bit of dairy recently would have been the cheese in the bean tostada at El Toro Tabmien in Fresno the Friday after xmas. It was shredded and would have been impossible to remove, so instead of sending it back I just ate it. Barefoot was sitting across from me, and being the carnivore that he is—and by that I don't mean he's actually an omnivore like most people who call themselves carnivore, I mean if he could eat nothing but large piles of meat for the rest of his life he'd be perfectly happy—I was grateful that he didn't give me static. It probably helped that I'd made it more than clear that my being vegan is purely for personal health reasons (cf. numbers above, which I don't think would have happened if I hadn't changed my eating habits), and has no political angle. I don't care what other people eat, and I know myself too well to think I'm better than anyone else for that or any other reason. Which is not to deny its inherent shock value, of course, and the best shock value is that which requires nothing more than simply existing. Welcome to my life, pretty much. Before we went to lunch that day, my brothers and I were at my dad's place, and it was mentioned by someone else that I'm not eating meat. My dad's wife said: but at least you're not vegan, right? Not wanting to have gotten into this conversation at all, I replied: actually, yes. The gods as my witness, she put her hands to face in horror like Bette Davis at the end of Watcher in the Woods and said: oh, no! As if she hasn't known for years that I was a lost cause. I mean, really. She relayed how difficult it had been when my errant niece Amber had gone through her vegan phase some years ago, and heaven knows Amber was very much of the "I'm better than you because I don't eat animals" school of thought, whereas I'm more of the "I can fit into this skirt because I don't eat animals, and the exercise helps, too" school. Evil has degrees. It's been sunny and warm the last few days, and it's expected to last through the weekend. I'm enjoying it, and feel like I should take advantage of it, but I'm not sure how, especially with Sadie out of town. 4:58pm Ten years ago today—very early in the morning of January 16, 1999, though we'd been up all night so it felt like it was still January 15—The First and I broke up, rebooting both our lives. So this is a decade, huh? 11:41pm Gave a girl I'd been talking to at The Dark Room this evening a Bad Movie Night flyer with my email address and phone number. Yep, I'm smooth. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 (working the town) 6:11am Dark six a.m., high half-moon. This, I'm fairly certain, is winter. 11:13am Back to the gym this morning, and again later this afternoon. This is the only way it works. | ||
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Wednesday, 14 January 2009 (aflame with cold fire) 11:49am Back at work. I made the right decision to not see Raphaela this morning, though, and since my body's still getting persnickety now and again I'll be giving Tyrol's spin class a miss as well. Which doubly sucks what with his Saturday classes being canceled, but c'est la vie and all that. Instead, after work I'm going to Fluevog in the Haight to get new boots. They don't make the ickily named Lucky Studs anymore, so I'm getting the next closest, the Angel Bill. They're about two inches shorter than my old pair (meh!) and they don't have the skihooks (MEH!), but they're Fluevogs, which means they'll be comfortable enough to wear all day long every day, and that's most important. Besides, they're pretty much the only game in town for what I'm looking for bootwise. I went to Stompers on Saturday to try a pair which I've had my eye on for some time now, the Wesco Jobmaster 18" Night-Siders, and while they're aesthetically correct and have the skihooks and everything, they were just wrong otherwise, including the price. So, back to Fluevog I go. Meanwhile, Puzzling Evidence has posted the New Year's Eve Ask Dr. Hal on YouTube. My question and answer begins at 7:40, including my Fernet-guzzling at the end. (Infrared makes me look fat. That's all I'm sayin'.) 5:11pm I got the new Fluevogs, the Angel Bills. They're comfortable right out of the box and they look good on me in spite of being a little shorter than the old pair (hey, I have nice gams and it's good for more of them to be shown, right?) and I'll get used to the lack of skihooks but OMG CHANGE IS SCARY even though I'm quite used to it by now. On the plus side—and, really, there's more plus sides than not—they charged me significantly less than what the website lists. Usually the website and store prices are the same, so maybe there was an unlisted sale, or maybe they just like me. The people who work at the store have known me for a few years now, so, sure, why not? As it happens, the difference in prices was about the same as what it would cost to have my old pair re-soled. That'll get me at least another year out of them. It'll be a few weeks before I get them back, but that's okay. Since I was in the Haight shopping anyway, I decided to hit both Wasteland and Buffalo Exchange to see if my luck would hold out. It didn't, not really, but I almost fit into a lot more stuff than I did six months. That's progress. sometime after midnight The cover's not my idea, I don't like it at all, and there's nothing I can do about it. Moving on. | ||
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Tuesday, 13 January 2009 (a minor third) 8:53pm Stayed home from work today. Two sick days in as many weeks? That's gotta be a record for me. It was the right decision, though. I'm feeling a bit better now. I can safely be away from the bathroom for a stretch, and I can eat, which I wasn't able to after I got home last night. That's progress. Raphaela had suggested getting together tomorrow morning to make up for last night, but I don't think my body will be ready for that kind of abuse by then. | ||
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Monday, 12 January 2009 (the sun never shines on the poor) 5:47pm Blech. I had to cancel on Raphaela tonight, for the second Monday in a row. Something's very wrong with my stomach, and I've probably lost a few pounds over the course of the afternoon. (Hey, whatever works.) I'm still at the office, since I don't dare drive right now. Fun. Since I feel fine other than my stomach, it could be food poisoning, though I haven't had to hurl I didn't eat anything out of the ordinary today. Had a blood orange, a couple of kiwi fruit, and some blueberries, cranberries, and soy yogurt for breakfast, and lunch was my usual Tofurky slices and vegan cheese sammich (with Veganaise and dijon mustard and relish), followed by baby carrots and mushrooms dipped in hot sauce-laced hummus from Trader Joe's. As I say, nothing out of the ordinary for me, my daily foodage since October. Still, when I look back on those blueberries, I don't quite trust 'em. They're shifty and out of season. Away they go. I was doing fine until this afternoon, and was rather productive. I sent off both my signed Femmethology contract and my application to the Blue Mountain Center, both of which are pretty big deals. I'm still working on my Albee Foundation application. The main holdup is getting that second letter of recommendation. Thus far, both people I've asked haven't responded. If I also get radio silence from the third person I intend to ask, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. I also finally called my old doctor's office, the bad man, and informed them that I'm switching doctors. They didn't ask why, and I wouldn't have expected them to. Why would they start giving a shit about me now? Speaking of such things, my current gym reading is Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, about the value of intuition and first impressions. This passage leapt out at me: Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and he isn't treating you with respect with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.Truer words, kids. | ||
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Sunday, 11 January 2009 (the dead letter) 5:24pm A friend informs me that the Latin translation is veni, boogi, vamoosi. Sounds about right. | ||
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