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Monday, 31 January 2011 (try to sleep) 9:21am Lousy turnout at Bad Movie Night for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. That's how it goes sometimes. On the plus side, my essay got some ink in a review of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation on the blog The F Word: Contemporary UK Feminism. It's not the first time it's been referenced in review—a transman seemed to take great personal offense at the use of "genetic girl" in the book, and I'm the only one who used that phrase—but the first time it's been actually been mentioned by name and/or discussed for its content rather than just being admonished for using verboten words: For me, one of the most interesting pieces was Sherilyn Connelly’s ‘The Big Reveal’ precisely because it disrupted my feminist assumptions about porn. Connelly explains that she finds ‘she-male’ (the term Connelly prefers) porn empowering. She notes mainstream depictions of trans women being rejected, assaulted or killed after they reveal their trans identity, in comparison to the fetishising of trans women as sex objects in porn. Connelly explains that she prefers the latter representation. Perhaps this is only the better of two bad options, but it was certainly a view I hadn’t considered before.Dig me, I'm disruptin' assumptions and stuff! And the final paragraph: Sherilyn Connelly’s contribution finishes, “I’m not a boy because I have a penis, and just because I don’t have a vagina doesn’t mean I’m not a girl” which might be the best summary of this volume. This resistance to gender conformity should be welcomed by feminists in the fight against multifaceted sexism. Hopefully in another 17 years, gender variance won’t be such an outlaw activity anymore.So there you go. 8:41pm Thomas Roche just asked me to read at My Sucky Valentine. Sweet! Two gigs in as many months! It occurs to me that I may not have a date for the show, since I'm not at the top of anyone's list for Valentine's Day. Which'll suck, but it also perfect for the show, considering. Maybe I can finally coax Raphaela out of hiding, since I'm more than ready for her to see me. | ||
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Sunday, 30 January 2011 (down the trench) 10:51am Aided by both earplugs and a fierce determination to sleep in spit of the increased rumbling upstairs, I managed to nap for about a couple hours, getting up around six yesterday evening. Dinner and many fashion crises ensued, and I was finally out the door by a quarter past nine on my way to pick up Ilene. Getting to the House of Light in Berkeley turns out not to be so difficult—or, rather, we get lucky with parking, since there's an eligible spot directly across the street, and though the building itself is on a sketchy residential street, its cross-street is a well-lit main drag with what looks like plenty of nighttime parking, so I'll be okay for future visits, which I'm pretty sure will happen. The House of Light is much bigger than one would expect for an address with a letter at the end, and as promised, some of the lights from the floor party are there, and others which weren't brought along but are very lovely all the same. Some people at the party I know from the floor party (including the Russian girl), some I know from Girl Pile or from just orbiting in the same circles because even when you're in Berkeley, San Francisco is a very small town. The first half of the evening consists of Ilene and I cuddling on the couch while watching boys flogging and beating and generally cavorting with each other, while I'm trying to find exactly what level of—well, let's call this song exactly what it is, what level of clinginess Ilene is comfortable with, which is a tricky, tricky balance because heaven knows I can get needy and scare them away (c.f. Ennui), and one of the things that makes Marta and I so compatible is that we have equal levels of clinginess, both physical and emotional, and even though I've known Ilene for over a decade and mostly just thought of her at the time as Frankie's barely post-teen friend with the camera, we only started to hang out in 2008, with a bit of cuddling thrown is as we would watch Carnivàle or Battlestar Galactica and then as we would fall asleep together fully pajama'd, with nothing resembling a kiss passing between us until I dropped her off back at her place after the NakedSword Dirty Dozen event that September and she gave me a quick, bouncy goodnight kiss and invited me to crash at her place, which I declined since it would have involved finding parking and plus I still had the energy to drive home, and would anything in particular happened if I had stayed over that night? I actually think not, because I'd spent the night at her place several times that year without it being anything other than two lonely friends, both still reeling from painful breakups, finding some meager physical comfort in each other. And then, for whatever reason, we pretty much stopped hanging out, only seeing each other occasionally at a party here and there and spending one more night watching Galactica at her place, but the old routine ended. Just because life changes, I guess. I got distracted by other things, mostly flings that never happened (Dyanne, Laura, Ronnie, though Bunny doesn't quite count because she was concurrent to Ilene and we hung out a lot and she was a good friend during that time, it was still a fail because I didn't even earn a sympathy peck on New Year's Eve) or that rarest of occurences, falling in love with someone while they're falling in love with me (Marta), and Ilene herself had a life to live as well, but I was never quite off her radar, either, as she over the past year she's continued to invited me to parties and to come out dancing and generally tried to keep me engaged with the outside world in a way that I wasn't always able or willing to do for myself on those nights that I wasn't with Marta (which is more nights than not), especially as the post-employment neglect caused my body to quickly fall apart. Marta herself wasn't bothered by the how out of shape I was getting, and I love her intensely for loving me for however I am, but it was kinda killing me inside, and I had to decline more than a few invitations from Ilene in the meantime as I worked on my body. And it was only because of that work that I had been feeling comfortable going out dancing and to parties and such lately, and now as Ilene and I moved into the Chill Room (with the prettiest lights of all, a string of color-changing LED chasers along the ceiling as well as a projector projecting patterns on the wall) and laid down on the thoughtfully provided mattress, I took off not only my boots but also my skirt but kept my blouse and fishnets on, not necessarily showing much in the way of untoward skin but definitely revealing the shape that I've been developing thanks to all those lunges and squats and River Tams and other bits of torture in bootcamp, and Ilene likes both the blouse and the fishnets so it's all good and I'm just thrilled that she invited me in there with them in the first place when she would have been perfectly within her rights to want a little time with someone else at the party, especially after I'd barely left her side for the last couple hours, and though my heart would have fractured just a little tiny bit I would have of course agreed and probably found a corner in another room to lick my wounds and sulk (this girl is catlike), but as we are it and it's just her and I, more casual than we've ever been with each other, exploringll her shoulders and back and neck (in a tank top and bra) and just generally more of her skin than I've ever seen at one time, glowing in a changing but mostly bluish iridiscent pattern thanks to the lights, ruminating on the fact that even on those many nights that we cuddled together and went to sleep in her bed or (rarely) mine that I'd never really thought of her as a sexual being before, and I'm now slowly testing boundaries, how she reacts to what, how much pressure I can apply where, learning that she doesn't like biting (or pinching, though I have to quiz her for a few minutes to determine that she was including biting as a subset of pinching, leading to a discussion as to whether or not they can really be consider variations on the same action considering the surface areas involved) which is one of my favorite things to do and have done but it's not hers at all and that's okay and good to know (and again, so different in so many ways than the dynamic between Marta and I who just connected like we'd never been apart on her first night at The Black Light District, going for whatever we were feeling like going for and hitting all the right chords with the other and keeping it almost entirely subverbal, intuiting consent—that wouldn't do at all with Ilene, who's nowhere near as rambunctious as Marta or me, and that's not a bad thing at all, it's a nice, different groove, and heaven knows life would be boring if everyone liked the same things done the same way) and among the many things I'm feeling grateful for is that even though I originally turned down Ilens' offer to pour me a glass of wine earlier in the evening because I always turn down such things I eventually did the math and realized that not only was I not going to be driving for a few hours at least, I had a few inhibitions to shake, and as much as the killjoy in me feels like using alcohol to do so is cheating, the fact is that it works and everyone else is doing it, so I did it too. [we pause and lie back, and ilene says: i've only been dating boys lately, and they're too easy. i need more girl action. i reply: girls are more work, and they're worth it. but i think i can help you find that action. i ruminate a moment. my triumphant return the still-running all-girl orgy, perhaps. ideally: me and marta and ilene going together. the three of us would be a force to be reckoned with, and since ilene's brought me further into this world that i've always outskirted, i want to return the favor as best as i can.] I get to thinking that that the fact that Ilene and I are now so fully involved with other people emotionally (me with Marta, Ilene with the erstwhile Porter) is perhaps what makes it safe to finally explore each other physically in a way that we didn't dare when we were both trying to heal from our major breakups, and the stakes are actually lower now because since we're both in much better places than we were then (or maybe none of that's true, these all my own suppositions about how things did and did not go), and there's not, there will not be the level of connection between Ilene and I that there is between Marta and I even as Ilene and I move into this new and ultimately unexpected but quite welcome phase of our relationship, as she has her hands full with the Porter (with whom she's spending this next week out of town), and that's okay, I like the idea of us both resurrecting the old friendship with these new benefits and she doesn't need me the way that Marta and I need each other, the way we're always in constant contact, even if i'm not who Marta's going to grow old with (but that's another matter entirely for another time). I look at my phone—to our mild shock, it's nearly two in the morning. Ilene says: time for an exit strategy. Which is true. We got ourselves put back together and joined an exodus which was already brewing, as they often will at parties where there's comparatively little drinking and no drug use. I was actually surprised by how not-tired I was on the drive back to San Francisco, of course very pleased that Phoebe's windows had all remained intact. 4:54pm At Borderlands Cafe now with Marta, stealing an hour or two together. I expect this may become a regular Sunday thing for us. | ||
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Saturday, 29 January 2011 (desert poly) 2:41pm So, the familiar-looking bouncer whose name I'm sure I learned years ago let us into The Power Exchange without checking our IDs (all while he was trying to explain to a group of men why they couldn't get in for free by themselves, nor at the couples' rate), and Artwhore told the also-familiar looking girl at the front desk to give Marta and I free wristbands for the Couples' Floor. And, in fact, that she even asked us if we wanted to go up there in the first place was new—I think it had only come up once before, one night with Ennui. Otherwise, I generally fell into the unwritten but understood "genetic women only" exclusion, which I was mostly okay with because to get bitchy about it felt pointless considering that I still considered The Power Exchange to be one of the most trans-friendly places in town, and unlike my fellow lefty conservatives, I'm not on the constant lookout for things to get angry about. God, what a horrible fucking existence that must be. Anyway, Artwhore asked me about the status of my book, confirmed the rumor he'd heard that he was a character in it, and assured me that he considers it an honor. Aww. Marta and I explored the joint, which was hopping quite nicely for not yet midnight on a Friday. The layout was necessarilyy different from the Otis location, and the venue itself used to be a strip club (still is on a number of a city maps), with the stage and pole kept up in all their glory. But there were just as many nooks and niches and crannies as the old one, far more than in the Las Vegas location, which Marta and I visited on our first night in town. (I failed to do anything with the copious notes I wrote about that night, and though I'm probably beyond the point where I can turn them into anything resembling an actual story, I should at least post the ntoes here. If I can find them.) Artwhore confirmed what had been rather obvious about the Vegas location: that it used to be an office building. A Nextel office, of all things. In any event, this new San Francisco location on Jones deep in the heart of the Tenderloin certain felt more old-school, and as I say, it was hopping, with plenty of tourists and wankers, including one guy who politely expressed his disappointment when Marta and I went into one of the small nooks but didn't actually do anything. Indeed, when he saw her and I go up the stairs to the Couples' Floor, where he was not allowed, he said: you are so lucky. And he's right, no question, I'm extremely lucky to be with Marta and I'm certain we missed out on a hot show as we tore into each other in the section of the Couples' Floor which we concluded must be the Movie Room, with the film reels painted on the wall and poster for The Cell and pictures of Heath Ledger as The Joker, among other things. Sadly, aside from the staff, I didn't recognize any of the patrons. Al and Rhonda weren't there, and we didn't know any of the people in the main play area, so we kept out. As for said play area, what used to be The Cage because it was fenced off now has a glass wall, or at least very large windows, so it's no longer a Cage but an Aquarium. Which is no less appropriate. And, actually, that's not entirely true about not recognizing any of the patrons: there were three a couple people there who'd also been at Sean's show at The Exit earlier in the evening, people with whom I used to be fairly close but are no longer because they had a massive falling out with some close friends of mine, and, well, I'm hardly the kind of ancillary person people fight to keep when during friend breakups. It became increasingly obvious that we were all going to the same place after Sean's show, and we kept crossing paths with them inside The Power Exchange because it was somewhat impossible not to, and while I expect it felt weird for them, I mostly found it hilarious. Even in this new and unfamiliar location The Power Exchange still feels like my home turf. I'll bet they weren't given free admission to the Couples' Floor. Neener, says I. (Though not to their face.) This morning after breakfast and catching up on our Thursday night teeve, Marta and I picked up from where we'd left off at The Power Exchange the night before. I was feeling a little distracted by the noise upstairs, as they were stomping around a lot and sounded like they were preparing for something, and the faucet in the backyard—the one that's directly opposite my pillow—had been running for what seemed like forever, and I wondered, as I often did, if they heard us, because neither Marta nor I are what you'd called "quiet" or even "discreet." We were finally naked (we always take our time getting there, because it's more fun when you work your way through the clothes) and straddling one another when there came a knock on the front door. That, surprisingly enough, had never happened before. Whilst in flagrante delicto, I mean. I put on leggings and blouse and skirt, closed the door to the bedroom and then flushed the toilet to pretend that's where I'd been (clever!) all while wondering if they could possibly be complaining about our secksnoises—surely that's something you would do in this day and age over email, right, and not by actually knocking on the person's door? And, indeed, it had nothing to do with that (though I can't imagine they couldn't figure it out)—it seems they'd accidentally locked the door that leads into the garage, and were wondering if I had a key. Okay, seriously? That? By the time I'd found my garage key they'd already located theirs, so it was for naught, but, wow. That, I guess, is one definition of unfortunate timing. Marta and I tried to resume, but I'd been thoroughly knocked out of my groove by that point. Marta was mildly frustrated but understanding, and asked if she could continue by herself with the help of Mr. Hitachi, and I of course said yes. I joined her, and before long both our melodies were resolved. I dropped her off a little later at her weekly therapy appointment, and now I'm going to nap for a few hours, because I have another long night ahead of me. 8:15pm Oh, frak. Yeah, they're definitely having a party upstairs. Makes me glad that I'm leaving in an hour to go to a party at someone else's house. I suppose I should write them sometime this next week to ask that they give a bit of advance warning next time, since I could have just easily been planning to go to bed early tonight, which would be impossible now. Alas. sometime after midnight you must worship in sadness as you worship in bliss | ||
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Friday, 28 January 2011 (a wake pattern) 11:34am The electricity's off. It's always kinda eerie how the ambient sound changes without power—nothing but the ticking of the battery-operated clock. And, yeah, didn't get quite as much done beforehand as I would have liked. Alas. It's going to be a very Tenderloin-y night. Marta and I are going to Cease and Desist at The Exit, probably having dinner at Golden Era first, and then finally visiting the new Power Exchange afterward. That's the plan, anyway. Yay for urban adventures. And it's looking like there might be another one tomorrow night, as Ilene and I are talking about going to a party in Berkeley, at the same house as the New Year's Eve party that I skipped. Not the best neighborhood, but, again, adventure and stuff. sometime after midnight I still hate the Tenderloin, but in the plus column, I still have juice at The Power Exchange. | ||
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Thursday, 27 January 2011 (ridge and furrow) 8:17am The power has been somewhat flickery the last few days, particularly in the living room, so my landlord's going to come check it out tomorrow. That's not going to do my productivity any favors, so I'd better make today count. | ||
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Wednesday, 26 January 2011 (metal in the head) 5:17am Speaking of deadlines, Jim asked me last night to be in another play at The Dark Room, this one in May. Based on the material, I may be slash hope to show a fair amount of skin, which means I have to keep working at this "getting into shape" thing. Which I was going to anyway—I might even start going on Mondays again—but it'll be nice to have an opportunity to show off my hard work. And now, to Bootcamp. 3:34pm Just got back from having lunch at Ilene's. We were going to have dinner, but life got in the way, as it often will. | ||
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Tuesday, 25 January 2011 (the air down there) 3:02pm This is a busy work week. I have lots to get done, and though I haven't been given a deadline as such, I want to have it done by the end of the week. I should be faster at this than I am, though. A lot faster. Meanwhile, it sounds like Lyon Martin is on the verge of shutting down. Goddamnit, San Francisco. | ||
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Monday, 24 January 2011 (discourse of the other) 1:02pm Good turnout for Iron Man 2 last night at Bad Movie Night, though we got more walkouts than usual. I also hated the movie, but that's kinda the point, too. I was at Trader Joe's this morning, and a small boy took a look at me, and then specifically at the squid,and ran to his mother, saying: mommy! keep it away from me! Heh. That's as valid a reaction as any. I also finally bought an iPhone 4, primarily because my 3G was becoming increasingly unuseable—which is a sad commentary on modern technology, I suppose, that it pretty much stops working after two years, but, well, that's neither here nor there. What matters is that I have a working phone again, and one I intend to use for another two years until it breaks down, too. I'm reading Molly Ringwald's Getting the Pretty Back, because that's evidently the kind of book I'm reading these days. In it, she describes (among other things) how to replicate one Catherine Deneuve's fully-clothed Belle De Jour looks. I like that. | ||
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Sunday, 23 January 2011 (falling into disrepair) 4:31pm At Boderlands with Marta, because this is where we go when we have a few hours to kill in The Mission. I picked her up yesterday afternoon from a friend's house, returned to the Black Light District, and as tempting as it was to just stay in, we decided to head back out into the world for adventure. I got all gothed out, boots and red-and-black stripeys and of the black slip-dresses which have finally started to fit well on me again (and not just because I'm losing weight but because I'm getting into shape, the curves of my body curving better than ever). We had dinner at a Burmese restaurant on Clement, picked up an even more gothed-out Ilene at her place, then went to The Stud for Dancing Ghosts, one of their monthly goth clubs. I used to go The Stud all the time in the nineties, and am happy to be becoming a regular again. Dancing Ghosts is of course an entirely different vibe from Frolic, and while I find I'm enjoying the music at Frolic a bit more these days (I seem to have entered a dance-music phase, which is extremely common at thirty-seven, right?), it was also wonderful to go back to my goth-kid roots, such as they. Marta herself has no such roots, and wasn't even quite sure what it meant that the evening's theme was a "A Tribute to Christian Death," but Ilene and I assured her that she had nothing to worry about on the dancefloor, and indeed before long she joined us and was getting into the groove. Then, as it was pushing midnight (and the song playing was The Tear Garden's "In Search of My Rose" which takes me back to Shrine in a way that few other songs this side of Bigod 20's "The Bog" can), Horehound (!) showed up. I'd promised Marta we would leave at midnight, but we stuck around for one more song, which quite conveniently was The Cure's "Lullaby." I introduced Horehound and Ilene to each other by saying you're both very important to me, so please like each other, okay?, which was perhaps a bit too much weird pressure but I'm nothing if not a big bundle of unfulfillable need, and by the time Marta and I had actually bundled up and were heading out Horehound was still dancing with Ilene (from whom I stole a little goodbye kiss) and the rest of our little group, so, here's to hoping. First thing we did when we got up this morning was to go out in search of coffee for Marta (she doesn't care for the Starbucks Via, and not only do I not blame her, I'm actually kinda glad that I'm not enough of a coffee connoisseur to realize how not-good the stuff is), then returned home for breakfast and catching up on our Thursday night sitcoms and then afternoon sex (which is right up there with morning sex, if'n you ask me) and then finally out into the world, because that's important, too. And we'll be going out into the world in a big way in March—New York, to be exact. We finally got our tickets last night. Leaving on Sunday, March 27 (which will be Bad Movie Night's sixth anniversary, but I'm pretty sure the show can run without that me night, especially if means I don't have to sit through Red Dawn yet again) and back on Friday, April 2. We'll be staying with a friend of Marta's, so that's going to help a great deal, and by the gods, I'm finally making it to New York. | ||
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Saturday, 22 January 2011 (under the ice-cold surface) 2:10pm Another review of Unthology No. 1. It doesn't mention my story (though I would argue that my piece does have quite a bit of humor), but it's a positive review all the same, and that's what matters most. sometime after midnight Oh yeah. I still got it. | ||
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Friday, 21 January 2011 (wind in the wires) 11:08am Bootcamp this morning, though no stretching beforehand (I already miss it, which figures), then back at home where I reblondified my roots of my bangs and colored the longer left-hand strands with the Fuschia Shock. Looks pretty good, and, as I say, I'm not looking for work anymore—the marketing guy just sent me a new batch of assignments—so the time was right. Plus it'll help me not lose the will to go out into the world tonight. 3:11pm Another: I'm afraid I have to pass on Bottomfeeder. I found it awfully slight in both substance and impact.Well, there you go. 7:32pm Ugh. I hate the Tenderloin so much. 11:13pm I went to Sean Owens's workshop thingy Cease and Desist: Telling the Story at The Exit, an extremely work-in-progress show about how he was blocked from doing a solo show about Paul Lynde. Fascinating stuff. I thought about staying out in the world afterward, especially since I was in full-on battlegear (completely with way too much makeup and my newly part-fuschia bangs), but I couldn't really think of anywhere that I wanted to go by myself. As usual, the only place that was remotely tempting was Divas, and though the new Power Exchange was just a couple blocks away from The Exit, I still want my first time going there to be with Marta. Which I'm sure will happen eventually. | ||
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