It's primarily acoustic, rather Harvest-ish, and extremely beautiful. Many of the songs have been knocking around for years, and the title track goes back to at least 1984. Another, "Razor Love," is just as old. Although I like this ostensibly official version, as I was telling Burnout, my favorite is still from the 1989 Rotterdam solo show.

Burnout's favorite was from the infamous 1997 "stealth gig" with Crazy Horse at the now defunct Trocadero, the former home of Bondage A-Go-Go. The night that Jim Jarmusch's Neil documentary Year of the Horse premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Neil left the movie after ten minutes and went to the Troc to play an unannounced show.

As unannounced as this sort of thing can be, anyway. The rumors started flying early in the afternoon, and I first heard when I was standing in front of the Castro. It was, coincidentally, the first time I met Burnout; he identified me by the Rust button I was wearing on my jacket. Upon hearing the rumor, and considering that it would be a few hours before our respective SO's showed up, we hopped in his car and drove out to the Trocadero. On the way, Burnout offered me one of the fatter and tastier joints I'd ever come across. It hit me fairly hard, but then as always, it didn't seem to affect Burnout at all. I've never known anyone with such a heavy tolerance for grass; if I were to smoke half as much as he does at a time, I probably couldn't stand up. My memories of the Ben Harper show are still rather fuzzy, but that's what I get for eating the damn cookie.

We recognized some other Rusties in line at the Trocadero, and they explained what they'd heard of the draconian ticket procedures, even more tricky than the Old Princeton Landing shows the year before. Basically, to get into the show, we'd have to miss the movie. Period. Burnout was tempted, but I was really looking forward to the movie, not to mention we wouldn't have time to back to the theater to get The Ex or Burnout's wife. Neither us were willing to get into THAT much trouble. So we returned to the theater, nicely baked and satisfied that we'd done what we could—we wouldn't get into the show, but we were attending the movie premiere, and I was excited as hell about that. And the movie didn't disappoint, though I suppose being a rabid fan helped.

Afterwards, The Ex and I briefly considered driving out by the Troc just in case, then realized that we were incredibly tired and decided to just go straight home. Which is why it makes perfect sense that had we gone, we would have found that after the movie let out they stopped charging admission at the club, so Burnout (and everyone else who went there after the movie) got to see Neil's second set for free.

That night was the first and last time that Neil's played "Razor Love" with Crazy Horse—first, second and last, anyway, becaue for some reason they played it during each set. Now, as Burnout was telling me on Saturday, the lights changed and Neil came closer to his side of the stage just for that song. His memory of it is quite vivid.

However, a videotape of the show has surfaced, and nothing like that happened. It seems to exist only in his memory.

It's odd when the memory plays those sorts of tricks. Like, when I saw Neil with Booker T. and the MG's at the Shoreline in '93, I distinctly remember the encore and last song of the show being "(Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay" (as homage to Otis Redding, who'd originally recorded the song with Booker). And yet all the evidence suggests that the next and final song was "All Along the Watchtower," which was the traditional last song for the entire tour. Seems to me I'd remember that, but when on the Rust list people started talking about the show and that song, I was confused. Even hearing a tape of the show doesn't change my memory.

The past, we concluded, is a subjective experience which doesn't become real until a majority agrees that it's happened. That's all history is, a consensus. If everyone agrees that something happened a certain way, then it probably did. Not that there's always agreement, even on the major events. And if that's the case for major events, why not the little, seemingly inconsequential things? Makes sense to me.

12:26pm

It's quite dead today. Guess everyone's recovering from a wild weekend. At the very least, TFQ isn't here, so I'm happy.

As if to mark the occasion, Pike and I both apparently decided to wear t-shirts with young goth cartoon characters today, he with his Tina shirt and me wearing a Lenore shirt which is way too small. I have no business wearing anything described as a "baby doll t-shirt" in public, but damnit, I'm wearing it anyway. Only barely makes it down to the top of my velvets (as much as anything, this is about me learning not to be so self-conscious about my groinal area), but when the two don't quite overlap, there's always the black Montgomery Wards waist-cincher to keep the fleshy parts from showing. Not exactly a Dark Garden corset, but it does the job.

1:24pm

In a manner whose potency seems to grow exponentially with each passing day, Madeline has been part of my life for a year.

2:21pm

I have really got to start paying attention, because Lou Reed also has a new album out. And I quote from the first line of the review on Amazon: "Ecstasy is a surprisingly brutal and angry record, even for Lou Reed, who virtually introduced those words into the rock & roll lexicon more than 30 years ago. Like the brilliant New York and Magic and Loss, Ecstasy is a sprawling song cycle dealing with one particular subject, in this case marriage and the ensuing death of love. "

Oh yeah. Lou is not happy, and he's letting us know. The man is my hero. I am so there.

4:05pm

So I'm sending my mom Carl Sagan's final book Billions & Billions and Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls for her birthday. If there's a message in that, I'm not sure what it is.

5:39pm

pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.

Wow, I'd forgotten that one. Where did I get it from, anyway? I did have my period of heavy defensiveness, and I suppose it's questionable whether or not it's entirely over...

9:32pm

It's driving me nuts, it really is. Where I did read that first? unnecessary plurality. If I find it fascinating now (the only thing that stuck with me from algebra was the beauty of factoring, of removing that which is redundant, of stripping away the dead flesh until you have only the truth of the pure numbers), then surely it must have been like a philosophical liferaft for me during the breakup. It appeals to that part of me which clings to the belief that I can reach some kind of better understanding of myself, or inner tranquility, or even mere happiness if I can just learn to purge, to get rid of the clutter, to realize that contentment in existence is based not the acquisition of things, but in learning to go without. At the time, I was applying it to personal relationships. Anyone I lost, anyone I drove away with my pain and anger and other forbidden _{you couldn't cry then because it was your own fault}emotions, anyone who turned their back on me, anyone who realized that the effort required to maintain a friendship with me was just too much, it was someone whom I obviously could live without, and living without them would make me stronger. It would have to, becuase there was nothing I could do to stop them—after all, I'd created the ^{you can't cry now because your time has passed}situation, how could I not expect them to react to the situation accordingly? Like my mom said, Well, can you blame them?

Hell, I'm not even sure what the exact translation is; I must have known then, but I've forgotten that as surely as I've forgotten where I first heard it at all. What was I reading? What was I watching? What was I listening to? Where are you now when I need you?

sometime after midnight

i've done all i can do
can i please come with you?

Sunday. It would have to be a Sunday.

Must go into full battle mode. Just in case. The worst, I have noticed, has a tendency to happen whether you prepare for it or not. you can't touch me, you can't get to me, you can't control me, you can't turn me into who you think i am, try your best, you're not going to beat me down, you have made me immune to your poisons...

12:46pm

She just called; her and boyfriend are at Twin Peaks, and they're on their way.

Steady, now.

3:22pm

I'll admit, that wasn't so bad. It was just my mom and her boyfriend, who'd already met us over xmas. Before they arrived, my landlord showed up to hook up the washer and dryer, and I helped him move them around and generally got my hands nice and dirty. I was hoping my mom would show up then, but they pulled up just as my landlord was leaving. At least I had the dirty hands to show them.

Her reaction to the apartment was quite reserved—I guess she's learning to reserve comment unless something genuinely suprises her, and nothing did. Oscar provided most of the entertainment (it's always a lifesaver to have an attention-starved cat around to defuse potentially tense situations), and Mina was clearly freaked out by the first real visitors we've had since her arrival.

So, I survived, and the whole experience was much less painful than I was expecting. I probably stressed out way too much about it, but better that than being ill-prepared.

The possibility was brought up (by me) of them coming by my office before they leave town. Madeline was almost successful in containing her laughter when I suggested it.

Oh, that's right. When I was arranging the delivery of the washer and dryer, the original plan was for it to be today. Knowing that my mom was arriving this weekend, I called and asked her if she knew when she was going to be arriving, so I could plan accordingly. She told me that she'd be getting in town on Saturday evening, and didn't plan on getting together with us until Sunday. She insisted that I not worry about her on Saturday.

Of course, plans changed and the stuff got delivered yesterday, but I never told her—which I guess is why I was surprised when she called earlier and left a message on the voicemail saying she was in town and wanted to come by. Starting with: "Hello? Are you there?" Then, to someone else, "They don't answer the phone." Yeah, well, you can't screen voicemail like an answering machine, either.

I'm playing possum. She doesn't know where I live beyond the address, and unless she has one of my brothers with her already I doubt she'd try to make it out here without actual directions or without even knowing for certain that I'm home. If she does show up on my doorstep, I'll claim that I had the ringer turned off because I wasn't expecting to hear from her. Otherwise, when I see them tomorrow, I'll say that I was gone all day, which could very well have happened (a breakfast date with Dana fell through, but I did swing by Burnout's place in Richmond, the first time I've seen him since August).

I'll receive a lot of static for this, no doubt, and my mom will probably deny ever having said what she said. Fine. This is a role I've gotten very used to and after a while, you stop letting it bother you. You state your case, get judged by someone else's version of events (or by their own interpretation of you as a person), and life goes on. The bottom line is, neither myself nor the apartment are quite ready for the scrutiny, not just yet.

5:30pm

I think the anticipation is making me physically ill.

I feel somewhat nauseous, and I suspect it's because I'm worrying myself so much about seeing my mom and her relatives. Unless I start hurling, though, I'm not cancelling.

Which reminds me of a couple years back, probably '96 or '97, long before I came out. The Other was invited to Maggie's birthday party, and I had a minor breakdown when I heard. I was told about a week or so before the party itself, and as the day drew closer, I began to realize that I didn't want to go. Did NOT want to go. Seriously. The thought of seeing her was just...no. It simply could not happen. Uh-uh. I could not even begin to fathom being in her presence. And it would be at a restaurant, so with a little bad timing I could end up rignt next to, or worse, across from her. It was not going to happen, period, no friggin' way.

The morning of the party, I realized my only option was to pretend to be sick. Otherwise, I had no way out. The Ex saw through it, and had a perfectly reasonable "I don't wanna see her either but if I have to then so do you" attitude, but in the end she left without me. By that point, I was feeling so guilty about faking it that my stomach really was churning. But, damnit, it was for a good cause. Seeing her was unthinkable, not something I could possibly let happen.

Turns out she didn't show up either. (The chances of her having flaked for the same reasons are roughly nil.) But, tomorrow, I'll be there.

11:01pm

If I hadn't earned the right to go out before, I have now: I just spent the last four hours covering the walls of the bedroom with black bedsheets. It's a project which has been on the proverbial back burner for some time now (I think the sheets were purchased in January), and my mother's impending visit increased its urgency exponentially. I would have liked to have already been at Shrine by now, but hey, it'll still be open when I get there, and nobody ever arrives before midnight anyway. The bedroom looks really neat, much like it should have all along, and that's the important thing. Granted, it'll probably give my mother a heart attack, but if she hasn't figured me out by now...

I do wish my upper lip hair wasn't so prominent right now (and I shaved about six hours ago, for fuck's sake), but I also know that if I take a razor to it I will cut myself...must resist. Low light, understanding people. Gotta remember that.

sometime after midnight

If I wanted near invisibility, or to at least be reminded that it's entirely possible for me not to be considered an oddity, I got it tonight. I'm not complaining. Oh, I wouldn't have minded really having someone to talk to, and it was nice to see Brigid again, but there's a lot to be said for just going and existing, nothing more. At least I was on the dance floor for "How Soon Is Now?" Felt just like the old days. Still, I dread tomorrow.

I ate three Oreos. My stomach's not happy with me.

Ugh. I'm having a new (well, used) washer and dryer moved in this morning. The old, very dead set is still hooked up in the garage, but pick pick. Since I'll be dealing with movers, most likely big men who move big heavy things for a living (and in this case they have to move them down from the third floor of a Victorian above the Panhandle), I'm going in what qualifies as stealth mode for me: unshaven and no makeup except for eyeliner. Which, to me, qualifies as no makeup at all.

Meanwhile, I seem to be on the verge of losing another friend. It's happened before, it'll happen again. I try to prevent it when I can and it always hurts, but sometimes that's how things go...

11:12am

Oh, that sucked much ass.

Well, in truth, the first part was kinda nice. It just so happens that I was buying the washer and dryer from Annika's boyfriend, whom I'd never met in person before. Annika had told him a bit about me ahead of time, and he had a fair number of thoughtful questions. I think I'm getting pretty good at that sort of thing.

He left for work shortly after the movers arrived, and I hid out in one of the rooms reading and feeling very bourgeois as they negotiated the stuff down the stairs. Loudly, and bickering with one another the entire time. I had to keep reminding myself that they were professionals, and that this is what they got paid to do. Not very well, of course—they had no bones about hinting at how nice a large tip would be, particularly for a job of this magnitude. It appealed to my liberal guilt perfectly, of course.

The really scary part was having to lead them back to my apartment. The majority of the drive was down Fulton and the turns were very few, but it was still nerve-wracking as hell. What do I know about the physics of a semi? And the driver, if I may be so bold, struck me as a slack-jawed idiot.

It was accomplished, though, and just under the two-hour mark so I didn't have to pay extra. Hooray for small miracles. Now I just need to call my landlord to get the machines hooked up, figure out what the hell I'm going to do with the old ones, actually go to work, continue bracing myself for this Sunday...

11:32am

Happy birthday, Laurel.

3:15pm

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is playing at The Red Vic tonight. Cool! Probably won't make it, though.

sometime after midnight

gee, wouldn't it just be so funny if i died in this dream...?
and nobody came...?

I'm so sick of it all.

I do have my limits.

5:35am

Now I'm beginning to wish I'd gone to Roderick's after all, because Sara was there. Haven't seen her since October.

9:31am

Don't expect anything out of me, and you won't be disappointed.

Seems simple enough, yes?

10:36am

there's something in the air
and you don't know what it is
you see someone though the window
who you've just learned to miss
and the road leads on to glory
but you used up your last wish
your last wish
and you want her to come home...

There. I got the the most obvious joke out of the way.

1:36pm

So I gave blood today.

It was on a whim, really. I had to run an errand at my old building, and as I was leaving I noticed the mobile home of a bloodbank. I'd never given blood before but have always felt like I should, and there's no time like the present. The fact that my immediate impulse was to walk away was also a strong persuader: if I'm nervous about doing something, maybe that I means I should do it. And you can't go wrong with socially accepted violation of the flesh when you're in a really foul, self-destructive mood, can you? Of course not.

I've been in full battle gear the last couple days, and when I walked in I suspect the standard vampire jokes went through their minds. If so, fair enough.

I filled out the paperwork as honestly as I could, including my birth name, "M" in the gender box and so forth. I figured that it should make things easier for them overall, and that I should use the name which matches my SSN. As for medications and being under a doctor's care, I did specify the hormones and Meridia as well undergoing electrolysis.

After completing the form, I was taken into the broom closet which doubled as a private interrogation chamber. Someone I gathered to be a nurse's aid went over my answers—the hormones required a bit of explanation—as well as asking direct and necessary questions about my sex life to determine my likelihood of having been exposed to AIDS. Not having had sex with anyone from Africa, any IV drug users or any men at all since 1977. Frankly, if I'd had sex before that I would have been less than four years old, and I don't think I'd want to remember it. Anyway, the closest I'd come (no pun intended, you pervert) to any of those would have been with The Other nearly six years ago, and not only was saliva the only fluid exchanged in my direction, the tobacco residue in the other mouth was so intense that no living thing could have survived anyway.

Surprisingly, although unsafe sex and IV drug use were obvious concerns, bloodplay wasn't even so much as hinted at. Particularly in the Bay Area, I would think that would be a consideration. Apparently not.

I was then taken to one of the reclining donor chairs. An actual nurse checked my blood pressure and inspected my arms for the veins; I automatically offered her my right arm, but she also looked at the left. To my surprise, she didn't ask about the scratches. I was momentarily tempted to say "It's result of an unhealthy means of dealing with frustration, as well as living with a rambunctious kitten overdue to be declawed." I kept quiet.

The nurse asked if I'd eaten this morning, and when I told her that I'd had a bowl of cereal at around 6am, she suggested I go into their "canteen" and get something to eat and drink first. The canteen was basically the kitchen area of the mobile home, with a layout that reminded me of nothing so much as a continental breakfast at a Motel 6.

As I helped myself to a cup of apple juice and wondered how my body would react to my first donut in a few years, I heard a voice: "Girl, I thought you were wearing ten-inch heels, and then I realized you're just tall!"

I turned and saw a small, weaselesque man in dark glasses and a black beret. (Not to cast aspersions on people who wear berets and sunglasses, as that would be quite hypocritical.) I guessed he was probably the driver. I looked down at my buetz, which I suppose upon first glance could lead one to think that I'm in fact wearing heels. If one is so inclined. I commented that I don't wear high heels for that reason: I don't need to be any taller. As it was, if I were any taller or the ceiling had been any shorter, I would have had to crouch. I'm guessing that once he got a look at my face (hello, noontide shadow!) and heard my voice, he read me.

When I returned to the chair, the nurse (not the aid this time) asked me back into the interrogation chamber. (That's a mean thing to call it, but I can't for the life of me think of a better term.) She was apparently confused about a few things on my form. The first question was fairly direct: "You're male, right?"

"Genetically," I replied, "Yes."

She asked about the hormones, and if I was planning on getting surgery. I was honest (a knee-jerk reaction that I need to work on) and said that I wasn't sure yet, but it was a definite possibility. I think that confused her even more. "Well, it's some kind of sex-change thing right?"

Argh. I hate that phrase almost as much as I hate the "trapped" cliche. But I agreed that yes, that's what it is.

Having found a handle on the situation, she then asked me if I'd had sex with any men since 1977. I pointed out that I'd already been asked that question, and in spite of the best efforts of their driver (okay, I didn't say that) my answer was still "No." She said that she just needed to doublecheck. Since, after all, what with me thinking I'm a girl and all, it stands to reason that I would like men and my original answer couldn't have possibly been right.

But they can't be blamed for covering their bases, so I didn't get upset. Not much point to it. I went back out to the chair, and she checked my right arm again for veins, then checked the left arm ("I have a cat," I blurted out) and decided it would be the better candidate. After swabbing the target with a copious amount of iodine (the same stuff Phil uses after zapping), she told me to look away.

I did, more for her sake than my own—I've always been rather fascinated by this sort of thing, and she had a much easier time finding the vein than during my blood test last year. I did watch as, towards the end, she siphoned off three smalled vials of blood from the main tube. The sight of my blood doesn't bother me at all, at least not beyond the obvious fact that my blood is supposed to remain inside my body. (I don't have a menstrual cycle, so let's not go there, okay?) Beyond that sense of alarm, I'm not nauseated or otherwise distressed. I mean, I can understand why some people would react like that, and I'm sure if I was lying in a pool of my own blood, that would be different.

I left not feeling much different than when I went in. I don't know if that's good or not.

  abbreviate \Ab*bre"vi*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Abbreviated; p. pr. & vb. n. Abbreviating.]
  [L.abbreviatus, p. p. of abbreviare; ad + breviare to shorten, fr. brevis short. See Abridge.]

  1. To make briefer; to shorten; to abridge; to reduce by contraction or omission, especially
  of words written or spoken.

  It is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off. --Bacon.

  2. (Math.) To reduce to lower terms, as a fraction.

                Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

I live close to the ocean, but seldom go to it. I should do so more often. Maybe that's what I need, a little more communing with nature, if you'll pardon the hippie connotation. Try to find a way to connect with the bigger world around me, re-establish my place in it, to find the sense of self which I fear is slipping away. Something I haven't done in a very long time. The things which brought me comfort once, may yet again...

There are worse things to have staring back at you in the mirror. Trust me, I've seen them.

3:55pm

Goodbye...?

4:04pm

Yay!

Simple pleasures, kids. Enjoy 'em when you get 'em.

TFQ's leaving, and I'm here for at least another two hours. If I'm going to have to be here, my nerves will be a lot happier if he isn't.

5:13pm

It's dumb, it's pretentious, it's probably annoying to many people, I stole the code from someone else and it almost certainly won't work on old browsers.

But I like it.

5:46pm

One time I had the presence of mind to ask my brother why he was hitting me. I guess this would have been in the early eighties—my parents separated in 1981 and I started hitting back around 1985 or 1986, so I would have been about ten years old. Why, I asked, was he doing this? What had I done?

It turned out to be my introduction to the magical world of the non sequitur: he was doing it to teach me deductive reasoning. Somehow, he was able to draw a parallel between critical thinking and beating the shit out of me, that one was helping me learn the other. To this day I have no idea where he got that one from. I suppose it must have made sense to him at the time.

6:30pm

i'd sooner chew my leg off
than be trapped in this
how easy you think of all of this
as bittersweet me

i couldn't taste it
i'm tired and naked
i don't know what i'm hungry for
i don't know what i want anymore

It all struck me as very pure. As American as it gets.

Dick Clark replaced Guy Lombardo, not the other way around. That one hurts.

9:11am

A reminder of my wasted potential. I'm so sorry, Carl—I'm trying to keep the faith, I swear. Does make me wonder what Tiff's up to these days, though.

1:54pm

Yikes. The Phantom Menace was released on video today. This is why I'm glad I don't work in that business anymore. I shudder to think...

2:30pm

Why is Roderick's on my mind?

5:26pm

you loved me as a loser
now you're worried that I just might win
you know the way to stop me
but you don't have the discipline

My anxieties have been building up over the course of the day. About seeing my mom this weekend, about some tensions at home, about where am I now personally compared to where I was last year...mostly abstract stuff, really. I think that's why I was considering going to Roderick's, becuase it had always cheered me up last year when my mind was in a fuzz. Which goes completely against that club's reputation, but that's how I remember it. (I don't know if this is a gift or a curse, but the more I recede from a negative time in my life, the more my memory focuses on whatever positives there might have been. The second half of the summer of 1990 was very, very painful for me...but there were some good things, too. Simple pleasures, but those are what I now remember the most. I suppose it's an extremely light version of blocked memory.) In any event, dancing is a wonderful stress reliever for me.

And it's a place I can go where I so fit in that I'm unnoticed. Between sort of talking to my dad and gearing up for what is likely to be some of my first real moral resistance to my gender transitioning (from my mom's relatives), I'm feeling very...I don't know. Exposed, maybe. On display, and a vain whore though I may be, I don't like being on display. I know I was an object of fairly intense discussion amongst the family last year, particularly as my outing necessarily coincided with my breakup. Fine, great, terrific, not a damn thing I can do to stop it, so there ain't any reason to get upset about it. Let them talk. Being face to face with people who come from a mindset which simply doesn't allow for the existence of queers is a different matter. Not to mention I'm chickenshit and would rather have other people do the dirty work of explaining me. I'll answer questions, but I hate taking that first step.

So I guess I was wanting to remind myself that I essentially do exist in a world in which my level of freakitude is no skin off anyone's nose in particular. Roderick's seems a good place to do that. (Trannyshack being out because of "Goth Night" and all.)

First things first, though, as I promised myself I would do, upon getting home from work I tried calling Lee, to continue on the eternal phone tag game. Assuming it's phone tag when the other person doesn't call back. There may be another word for it.

Whatever that word may be is irrelevant, because I actually spoke to him. He recognized my voice without me having to identify myself, not bad considering we haven't spoken since August. He sounds quite happy, and in a development which is a paradigm shift that most ardent millennial doomsayer couldn't have fathomed, is getting a driver's license soon. I'm having almost as much difficulty wrapping my brain around that one as I did when he told me he didn't live in Bolinas anymore.

Still, we'll be seeing both his current and former homes soon enough; we have tentative plans to visit him later this month, probably on Easter weekend. Saturday night we'll spend at his place in Santa Rosa, and on Sunday morning head into Bolinas. Sounds to me like a great way to spend a weekend, and finally, Maddy will get to meet this odd little person she's heard so much about. This will also be one of our first times going on a trip together, although we've actually also been considering going to Santa Cruz the previous weekend. April is shaping up to be busy as hell.

I also got from him the password to the net.goth journals webring, something we'd originally discussed back in August. I wasted no time in trimming down the ring to the journals which are actually maintained on something resembling a regular basis. Wielding that power like the blunt object that it is, I am. _{then we take berlin}

If all goes well, I'll be seeing him before the end of the month. All has a tendency not to go well, of course, but damn if I don't feel a little better about the other shit I'm facing in the near future. It's kinda hard to explain why. Maybe in my mind he represents a source of hope or inspiration from another, much darker time, but one that perhaps I haven't left as far behind as I'd thought. It sounds like I'm mythologizing him all out of proportion, but I don't think I am. I know he's just a guy (the guy who taught me what I needed to know about makeup and gave me the jumpstart I so desperately needed at the time, but just a guy) with his own strengths and weaknesses, trying to learn from his mistakes while following his own path. And if I admire him a little, or a lot, there's nothing wrong with that.

Okay, so I'm obsessing on the weather. Your point? Maybe SAD works backwards in me. Hell, what doesn't?

10:10am

I'm not above irony. Indeed, I wallow in it. If one were so inclined, I suppose it could be called "hypocrisy."

I carted several pounds worth of old CDs, laserdiscs and records to Amoeba yesterday. Funny how the apartment still seems cluttered, but it was an attempt at purging, of getting past my collector/packrat genes. I'm quite sure it's genetic, too. When my great-aunt died a couple years back, it became open was on her belongings, particularly her extensive book collection. (Her funeral was the last time I set foot in Coalinga, at least until I visited its sister city of Manhattan, Kansas.) This looting was not only encouraged by my mother—who by default was left with the unpleasant task of cleaning up the legal, financial and household messes her aunt left behind—but as fas as she was concerned we couldn't have taken enough. My brothers and I each left with what seemed like a trunkful of books, and there were still hundreds left over, most of which now adorn the walls of my mother's living room.

Among other things, the experience put a fear into my mother of ending up like her aunt, who in spite of knowing of her impending mortality did nothing to prepare for it, not even for the well-being of her many cats. I know people in their twenties who remember to buckle up for fear of who would take care of their cats back home if the car should crash, yet this woman was old enough to think Guy Lombardo was a lousy replacement for Dick Clark (I spent many a New Year's Eve in Coalinga) and yet she did nothing to make sure her pets would be all right.

Now, I won't deny that the acquisition of stuff is a strong pull for me. It's not quite materialism in the classic sense (she kept telling herself), but I do like the concept of collecting, provided it's something you can return to. Seperating out the stuff to sell yesterday was a difficult task, much more than it should have been. What if I want to watch this movie again? I haven't in a long time, but I like it, and what if? Never can tell.

On a few occasions I've had things stolen from me; our apartment in Fresno got broken into a couple times (at least once by an actual stranger), my CD case containing the majority of my Dylan CDs got nabbed out of Burnout's trunk when we were at a Patti Smith show at the Fillmore, and most painfully a box of compilation tapes out of our car when we were in Fresno a few years back. Some of that stuff I've replaced, some I haven't. Life has continued on, and I've lived a very full life without the things I don't have anymore. So why should it be difficult to get rid of things to which I have no great attachment, things which are just taking up space which can be more efficently taken up by other things?

Hence, I didn't even care how much I got for the stuff. It was about purging, not profit. Granted, the profit in the form of store credit would be nice, whatever the amount.

I left with considerably less than I came in with, which was kinda the point. I did manage to find something I'd been looking for: Trust Obey's Fear and Bullets, my interest having been stirred in spite of Vlad's championing of the group. Then again, I've never really let that sort of thing deter me—one of the most important lessons which fandom teaches is tha just because you share common interests with someone, it doesn't mean you'll like them as a person—and the Crow connection was also a major factor. (Coincidentally, Summer has asked me to review The Lazarus Heart for Errata. Christ, I haven't even looked at Errata in months.)

Yet, it bothers me that I'm even mindful of such things as having first heard about the group through Vlad. Like I'm just trying to prove that I'm open-minded or something.

Shortly after things disintegrated between The Other and I in late '94, she wrote me a very nasty email in which, among other things, she accused me of having been with her because I wanted to show the world how cool and open-minded I was by having a fling with a tranny. Foresight, or even the slightest degree of empathy, was not among her strong suits.

I think there was a point of some kind I was working towards with all this, but I really don't know what it was.

2:29pm

This Tuesday is "Goth Night" at Trannyshack. Clearly, I shouldn't go. What would be the point? Why should I go if I won't at least stand out? My ego can stand the pounding it gets at Shrine, but I'm not sure I could handle it at Trannyshack...

3:48pm

how much did you expect to keep?

Sunday, that is. Seeing my mom and the unspecified relatives. I don't know that I'm up for it.

Here I go again, but—maybe if I can get in touch with Lee...

sometime after midnight

every system has flaws

cracks and errors and imperfections and huge gaping bleeding wounds

no matter what

deal with it

Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.

—Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow

The days may be getting longer, but the temperature is supposed to drop. I love San Francisco.

10:24pm

Sometimes I wonder if the most frustrating part of being a writer—a real writer, someone like Poppy or Maddy or Summer or Caitlin (there can't be another, right? she's already in that position, is there room for one more?), not a lame, imaginationless diarist such as myself—is getting to the good stuff. Having great idea for certain moments in stories, and looking forward to them, but knowing you have to write everything leading up to that point first. Or maybe they don't do it that way. Maybe they write the way a film is shot: not in sequence, but however is the most efficient.

There's a story I've been writing on and off (mostly off) for well over a year now. It's the a prequel of sorts to this diary; the first three parts cover meeting Summer and the immediate, hellish aftermath of my breakup with The Ex. That's all I've managed to churn out, and after reading it Lee suggested I start an online journal. I wasn't even aware that such things existed, but hey, I'm the first to admit that I was very naive a year ago. (Of course, not a year goes by without me being able to say, "Gosh, I sure used to be naive." Seems I haven't noticed the pattern yet.)

In any event, there's two parts left, leading up to about a week before I started the diary. I know what happens in each one, the emotional beats, the things that need to be said, the personal revelations which seem just as important to me now as they did then, particularly at the end of part five, a moment when I gained a harsh but utterly necessary wisdom...and yet I'm having great difficulty sitting down and actually writing it, if even for my own benefit, since I actually want to see the finished product. So why haven't I?

surprise!

nothing's different.