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Friday, 20 April 2001 (you trip me up) 8:24am Every generation since the invention of radio has gone through that traumatic period of realizing that the music they grew up with, their music, eventually gets relegated to the "oldies" category. As with much of their culture, the boomers did a pretty good job of semantically sidestepping that term with "classic rock", which like most everything else boomers do seems designed to help them feel better about aging. Maybe our parents listen to "oldies," but our shit's classic, man! Bullshit. Oldies are oldies. "Peggy Sue," "Satisfaction," "Stairway to Heaven" and "New Moon on Monday" all qualify, regardless of the pedestal upon which their generation chooses to place them. Deal with it. In ten or fifteen years, Britney Spears will be on oldies stations. (While her then-current stuff is played on the Top 40 stations. Something tells me she's going to be around for a while.)
That said, I miss the oldies stations that existed when I was growing up. Maybe they're still out there, I don't know.
If not, I'll have to start it. The kind that focused on the period between "Rock Around the Clock" and the pre-Beatles early
sixties. Not so much of the post-Elvis boy crooner stuff; there's a lot of great Gene Vincent (the real King of Rock 'n' Roll, thank
you very much) which can take its place, as well as Link Wray. Hmmm...I think I'm onto something here...
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9:20am Die for oil, sucker. Remember that? Probably not. I doubt many people heard it at the time, since being opposed to the war and/or not deifying (aka "supporting") the troops was very dangerous in our war-crazed society. I was lucky enough to get a tape of Jello's single—a "stolen" copy, in today's parlance—and it was a bit of hope, a reassurance that other people out there felt the same way about the national policy of killing towelheads. Being surrounded by people carrying FUQ IRAQ signs, it was easy to forget that not everyone was whipped up into blind frenzy of racist nationalism. I wonder how many people who oppose the more recent bombings of Iraq were, back in the day, in full support of the war. Because, you know, that was different. We were liberating Kuwait and keeping gas prices low. Yay war! We rule!
Yeah, I know. It was ten years ago. I should get the fuck over it, and get ready to wave a flag the next time it happens. "No, no, we
really need to bomb them! It's for freedom and democracy, honest!"
I also have to make an appointment with my endoc, the first since last November. I expect this one will be a bit more like my usual visits with my old endoc, mainly a physical checkup. Although this time it'll be with someone who actually gives a damn. Funny what a difference that makes. Plus I'll probably have quite a few questions for her about my face and abdomen, stuff which I would have been afraid to ask my old endoc for fear of her shrugging them off. Her answers probably wouldn't have been especially helpful anyway. They never were. And, of course, I need to get zapped again. (And again, and again, and again. I have no idea why I was getting melancholy about it before, 'cuz it's never going to end.) Unfortunately, I didn't time my final pre-trip zap so well; I should have waited at least another two weeks, since the regrowth is darker and heavier than I'd been expecting. Is it especially dark or heavy? On a purely empirical level, no, it isn't. To me, it's impossible to miss. And I just know I'm going to be scrutinized on the trip. I'll be meeting the majority of Maddy's family, including those who avoided me last time—which is to say, everyone except her mother. It's like this. I'm outed to everyone, so there won't be any great shock in that respect, but I'm still an enigma. More than that, the concept of me, of what I am, is scary and mysterious, at least beyond what they've seen on teevee. Indeed, it'll be like a little piece of Jerry Springer intruding into their own lives. (Remember in Bloom County when wheelchair-bound Cutter John met Bobbi Harlow's mother? First panel, he comments that some people are uncomfortable around the handicapped, and she assures him that isn't the case. Second and third panel, they just look at each other silently, she with a smile plastered to her face. Fourh panel, he casually says "Boo" and she throws her arms into the air in pure terror. I'm expecting reactions not dissimilar to that.) Which is why I'm so fucking paranoid about facial my hair. It's something which I'm sure will be zeroed in on, especially by Maddy's brother-in-law. He's the one I'm worried about the most, since he has a long history of giving Maddy shit about her appearance and how she lives her life—including at least one profanity-laden missive back when she was simply considering moving out here, which while allegedly done on behalf of her heartbroken sister, was surely the excuse he'd been looking for to tear into her—often then hiding behind an "Aw shucks, can't you take a little joke?" defense. (He also has a separate refrigerator exclusively for beer, but mentioning that would be akin to an ad hominem attack, so I won't.) If I have any kind of visible facial hair, even sans bright red lipstick or huge false eyelashes or any of the other tenets of the exaggerated drag he sees on teevee, it'll cement in his mind that I'm nothing more than a pervert, an especially depraved faggot pretending to be a girl. Which is fine, he can think that all he wants. I just don't want to hear about it. Ultimately, I'm not as worried about him giving me static as I am about him doing it to Maddy, which he surely will. Because it's all in fun, right? Right! Sure it is! And, importantly, he's never faced real opposition before. And if she's bothered, well, then, she's just being oversensitive. What's more, in addition to being a hard-workin', beer-drinkin', Packer-backin' Man, he's the father of his wife's child, and as we all know, the ability to ejaculate and have it result in a baby is proof of nobility. (Did you know that if a man is married he can't possibly be interested in other women? That's what I've been told.) Immediately leading up to and after the birth, he was actually being polite to her, and there seemed to be a bit of bonding going on. I'll admit, it lasted a little longer than I expected, until the right opportunity came along. And I'm sure he'll get many more in the next few weeks. So I'll just have to sit back and take it, kinda like when The Ex's younger brother was in his preteens and had carte blanche to terrorize her or anyone he wanted. He could hit us, but we couldn't so much as look at him unkindly because he was her mother's precious baby—not surprisingly, he had three older sisters. You do the math. (Makes me wonder, not for the first time, what would have happened if I'd been born the girl my parents were hoping for at the time rather than the fourth boy in a row. "At the time" being the key phrase.) Anyway, while I know he won't lay a finger on Maddy, he's likely to harangue her every chance he gets, and I won't be able to respond. That's the theory, at least.
Probably I have nothing to worry about. We'll go, we'll do what we need to do, and it'll be over.
And even if it doesn't go smoothly, it'll still be over eventually. That's where the linear
nature of time comes in handy. No matter what the anticipation leading up to an event may be
like, it finally happens, then it ends, and it fades into memory. Good or bad, it doesn't matter.
That is all.
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Wednesday, 18 April 2001 (sowing seeds) 6:51am Sad though it may be, one of the things that helps gets out me out of bed on weekdays is wanting to read the daily edition of Suck. Except, unfortunately, on Wednesdays. So help me, I just can't get into Filler. I suspect I wouldn't make a very good gay boy. 11:15am Perhaps to balance out my darker motivations for exercising (ifimnotthinimnotpretty), I tend to read fairly lefty stuff while working out. During the first big push in '98, I read (among other things) Ben Hamper's Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line and John Vidal's McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial. Right now it's Naomi Klein's No Logo, probably the most subversive of them all. While none of them specifically deal with guns, they're still fairly liberal and therefore have a strong liberal bias, so I should probably read Ted Nugent's book next. So I won't be all improperly biased and stuff. Guns = freedom = guns, y'know. Elsewhere, I've moved onto the second of the Harry Potter books. What can I say? They're fun, and getting much darker than I expected. I'd like to think that they're giving kids around the world nightmares. More than that, I hope Jack Chick is correct (hey, there's a first time for everything) and the books are leading kids away from xtianity and into the occult. We should be so lucky. Anyway, the last two books aren't in paperback just yet, so I'm going to have to hit some used bookstores in the near future.
I'm also thinking I should get a new scale, an actual new one rather than another thrift-store purchase. I'm still getting the 190-200 range
from the the ones I currently own, and the gym's scale is almost as antiquated. Yes, I'm aware that you don't need a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows, but I'd still like a baseline, something to judge by besides my own perceptions. I know I can't
trust those.
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Tuesday, 17 April 2001 (inside me) 9:00am I couldn't actually test the iMac ad I linked to last night, since the quicktime causes my computer to choke up. (Same thing happens with RealAudio, .mov files, you name it. Prolly going to need a new video card. Yay.) Anyway, looking at the ad now, I see that "Don't Steal Music" isn't included anymore; I'd only ever seen the ad on teevee, so maybe the online versions never had it in the first place. Perhaps they figure people online already know the score, so it's the unwashed masses who need to have the simpler message drummed into their heads—don't even think about it.
I was still wound up from going to the gym, so I didn't get to bed
until later than I would have liked, and slept fitfully at best.
(Around 2am I tried to get Maddy up, insisting it was time to go to
work. Whoops.) When I dreamed, my subconscious fucked with me
even more than usual. Normally, I dream according to the principle
of "What's the worst thing that could happen next?" And then I find
out. Sometimes, though, it goes in the opposite direction, letting
me experience a bit of happiness, what I suppose could be called
fantasizing, even if most people would find it terribly boring.
And then it's over...
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Monday, 16 April 2001 (never understand) 10:28am I went to bed at five on Sunday morning (Maddy had a head start), was up again at nine, and at the gym by half past ten. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I'm going to try to go Sunday through Wednesday. Perhaps more if the opportunity presents itself, but it's good to take a few days off. Pacing, you know. Divas wasn't as intimidating as I was expecting. It's not necessarily more hardcore than the old Motherlode, it's just bigger, really. I didn't get the sense from the regulars (which is to say, the working girls) that I was encroaching on their space. I didn't try to make time with their clients, so there was no problem. And aside from the facts that I'm with Maddy, don't care for casual sex and the majority of them aren't even remotely my type—being mostly slightly older men—it was much more interesting to observe the mating dances, both figuratively and literally. Then again, maybe they wouldn't have minded if I did. While they were in the restroom, one very excited, presumably non-prostitute girl told Maddy that she'd just come back from getting the full suite of operations overseas—SRS, a brow lift, et cetera—and was going to be getting laid for real for the first time tonight. Needless to say, Maddy didn't solicit this information, but she found was told anyway. The dangers of having a kind face, I suppose. Shortly before closing Maddy and I were sharing the elevator with a younger gentlemen and his two recently acquired dates for the evening. They were actually rather cute as the area's tranny working girls go, not having the reconstructed look of so many of the others. They seemed more interested in talking and laughing with one another in their native language than speaking to him, and he finally said, "I should learn Tagalog. I'm feeling left out." It was hard not to laugh out loud and say, "Dude, maybe you're paying for it, but the fact of the matter is you're about to get into a three-way—I really don't think you should be bitching about feeling left out." No point in putting a damper on his evening, though. Apparently Miguel wants to do this on a semi-regular basis. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday night, and we only had to chip in $20 towards the limo, which more than makes up for not having to drive, park, etc. With the exception of the pretty, constantly shifting lights, the opulence of the inside didn't really do much for me. Miguel described it as the height of luxury, and I suppose by some standards it was, although personally I could have sacrificed the bar for a bit more leg room, and a CD player with better antishock would wave been nice. But that's just me. Miguel had described his girlfriend Asia as having Betty Page hair, and though her bangs aren't nearly blunt enough—indeed, she doesn't try to get them blunt at all. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and it just goes to show that Betty's name is tossed around much more than it should be (I'm a case in point). If she resembles anyone overal, Maddy and I decided, it's Karen Allen from Raiders of the Lost Ark, although Asia's very thin and has a tendency towards slightly more revealing clothes. Her interest in wicca and the like not withstanding, she isn't at all goth like I suspected; as Maddy pointed out, she isn't a Not-A-Goth, she just isn't goth. Miguel expressed a desire to take her to Hot Topic (his favorite store) to get her suited up, but she doesn't sound at all interested. To each their own.
His assistant wasn't as annoying to be around as I was anticipating, and I've
decided the comparisons to The Fidget Queen aren't entirely fair. They both come
across as vapid, but I doubt TFQ would ever wear makeup—he's not one of those.
I can imagine the look on TFQ's face if he went into a place like Divas—or,
for that matter, saw me at The Bar on Casto. And who knows, it may happen yet.
...or I can use the Napigator plug-in, get really lucky and find "Halloween." Not a guaranteed plan, but hey, it worked this time. Yeah, I know, Alan Freed died for my sins. (Actually, I'm not sure what that means, but I like the sound of it.) Meanwhile, about as far away from the major players in the Napster furor you can get is something I discovered on public access this weekend: Brutal Sound Effects. For when Britney and Limp Bizkit just aren't doing it for you anymore.
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Sunday, 15 April 2001 (taste of cindy) 1:13pm At about a quarter to four, we were in the limo heading back to Miguel's. Everyone was asleep except for myself and the driver, since we were the only ones who hadn't been drinking, for obvious reasons. (Well, that's not entirely true; I wouldn't have drank even if I didn't still have to drive Madeline and I back home from Miguel's.) It struck me as metaphoric, though I'm not sure for what. After a bump in the road awakened Maddy, she stayed up with me so I wouldn't be alone. I do love her.
Oh, happy Zombie Day. You can call it a "resurrection,"
but it boils down to the same thing. Shoot for the head!
So I was sitting at a table while Maddy went to get a drink. I found myself wishing that I was sitting in the other chair, since pointing in this direction the slit in my dress was facing the wall, ergo nobody could see the fishnetted legs which Maddy had thankfully convinced me earlier in the evening to put in something other than stripeys. (The logistics of stripeys were much simpler than that of fishnets and garters, but she was right: they just didn't go with the dress. Goes to show how seldom I actually put effort into my appearance anymore.) Of course, this was a considerably different crowd than at Divas, its chasers lining the walls like wallflowers at a school dance, looking but afraid to approach or touch. At least not until later in the evening when the beverages had been flowing and the meat market would really open. We went back there after The Bar, a little while before closing, and the air was humid with commerce. I was reminded of Trannyshack right around closing. Well, duh. It took me longer than most to grasp the extent to which sex and the pursuit thereof (YOU LIKE?) dominates people's lives, particularly in bars on Saturday nights. Especially in what is essentially a fetish bar. Okay, so I was very naive for a long time. Still am, in a lot of ways. Presently, I was at the table when a guy walks up to me and asks my name. I tell him, and with the broad, sycohphantic smile of the non-belligerent drunk he tells me that I'm beautiful. I thank him (see? see? I'm getting better), and he continues on, telling me that I'm gorgeous and have luminous skin. I thank him again, feelng genuinely flattered but still having to fight the urge to argue the point (I'm not beautiful, and I can list all the reasons—would you like it in alphabetical order or by degree of severity?). He certainly seems sincere, even if I suspect the alcohol is pulling the strings; probably he's saying the same things to the few cross-dressers in the bar, of which he surely suspects I'm one. And why not? Then he says something which he probably didn't say to anyone else: that I remind him of Betty Page. Just goes to show the fundamental difference between a goth club and a gay bar—or a goth club and anywhere else, really. At Shrine (to which we never did make it) my hair is a dime a dozen, but here it was a bit of an oddity. As a general rule I object to the comparison, since similar hair does not a resemblence make, but I thank him all the same. The urge does win out, though, and I make some lame joke about how it's all smoke and mirrors, referring to the mirror on the opposite wall. Like I said, it was a lame joke. At this point Miguel's friends drift over and start talking to my admirer, and we don't speak again. Still, though. Luminous skin. Cool. Overall we had a lot of fun, but that pretty much made my evening.
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Saturday, 14 April 2001 (in a hole) 9:45am Shaved this morning for the first time in at least three weeks, and about two and a half weeks since I last got zapped. The overall regrowth really wasn't that bad, and the black hair on my upper lip was sparse at best. Miguel's doing our hair this morning, though, so it seemed like as good a time as any to shave. And, remarkably, I didn't cut myself.
As absurdly counterintuitive as it sounds, I have a hunch that when I'm finally
done with electrolysis, I'm going to be depressed. I'm mean, in spite
of how much I bitch and moan about it, I already feel a little sad about the
fact that soon (well, "eventually") I won't be going anymore.
It makes no sense, but
there it is. I suppose it's similar to the heavy depression that often hits
after SRS, the sense that you've gone as far as you're gonna go, that this is
it. It's almost like a loss of hope, because there's nothing more to hope for.
Yeah, I know, we're an ungrateful and whiny bunch.
There will be six other people in addition to ourselves, unfortunately including Miguel's
new assistant, a vacant club kid reminiscent of a taller version
of The Fidget Queen. Oh well. Nothing's perfect. It's still going out, which is
not something we do nearly enough.
I GO TO POWER EXCHANGE NOW It's sad that I'll never know the full story of that particular transaction.
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Friday, 13 April 2001 (cut dead) 8:59am No gym last night. I followed much higher calling: going to Borders to pick up a movie I'd ordered. Well, sort of. What happened was, I'd bought They Live on DVD a month ago. As any Carpenter fan will tell you, it was never released letterboxed on video or laser (or at all on laser, if memory serves), and since it was in the $10 bin I snatched it up. Silly me, I didn't open it until I got home, and discovered that the disc itself was missing. That's what I get for not opening it in the car, or noticing that it felt a few ounces lighter than the others. It's all about the little details, y'know. So I went back a few days later, and after being bounced around to almost every counter and getting a different blank stare at each one, I finally got a store credit and was told they'd order me a new copy. Should take a few weeks, and they'd send me a postcard(?) when it arrived, although I could also call and check. Fine. In the meantime, my suspicions as to why those particular movies are so cheap was confirmed, sorta. I figured they were going out of print, which wasn't true at the time—but they are now, because they were priced too low to begin with. Ah, capitalism. Gotta love it. Anyway, I've called about once a week since then. No, it hasn't come in yet, but it will, soon. I figured that I was pretty much out of luck entirely; probably that had been the last shipment of them entirely, and if I really wanted it, I'd have to pay eBay prices. Um, no. I might as well just rent it from Le Video. I don't need to own it, really. And yet, snarky comments about capitalism aside, I am still an American, and part of my sense of identity comes from accumulating stuff. And so. Feeling just well enough to run some errands (and surely going stir-crazy after having spent the last few days at home), Maddy went by Borders yesterday and discovered there were at least three copies of They Live in the bin. Naturally, we hadn't yet received the postcard, so she put one of them on hold for me. When I got home, I called them and asked if the one I'd ordered had come in yet, and was told it hadn't. Of course not. Why should it? So I cancelled the order, went down there (as opposed to going to the gym—see? see how it ties together?) and bought the one that Maddy had put on hold for me. It's a good thing I don't expect the simple things in life to run smoothly, or it all would have been very frustrating. (When I first saw Michael Moore's The Big One in '97, I'd never set foot in Borders. After learning he was banned by them for being pro-union I swore I never would. Funny how things change.) The store is at a very gnarly intersection in the Stonestown Mall. It desperately needs a protected left turn, but this is San Francisco so of course it's just a yield. One of the last times I had to make a left I got honked at by the car behind me because I was waiting for pedestrians to cross. The car then went around me, also having to wait for the aforementioned pedestrians, but yelling at me to express their displeasure at making them wait. If I'd gone forward when they'd started honking I would have killed at least three people, but I don't suppose that matters. That's just how drivers in this city tend to be, whether they're in SUVs or not. Anyway, last night I was waiting to cross that intersection on foot. People were crossing while the light was red, apparently having done the math and determined that their hinders and a car would not be occupying the same physical space at the same time—besides, the cars would slow down in time. One person yelled and swore at a car which passed behind him, presumably for not having slowed down sufficiently, in spite of the fact that the pedestrian was crossing against the light, i.e. jaywalking, aka doing something really fucking stupid. (At least those people the other driver had wanted me to run over were in fact crossing legally.) This is how people are.
Later that night in bed, I read aloud to Maddy from Harvey Pekar's
American Splendor comics. I was pleasantly surprised to discover she liked them, in spite (or maybe because) of their
deliberately slow, resolutely matter-of-fact storytelling style about an extremely ordinary life.
This is also how people are. Thankfully.
Even if I'm not done, I probably won't be reading them on the trip to the Midwest; it just seems wrong, somehow. My planned reading material is the second Shirley novel, Eclipse: Penumbra. Am I so damn pretentious that I would be embarassed to be seen reading a such a well-known, family-friendly book? Apparently so.
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Thursday, 12 April 2001 (the hardest walk) 8:59am Maddy's still sick, but I took the train this morning. The Batcave isn't readily available on Thursdays, and I didn't leave the apartment until a quarter to six, so even if I'd drove it would have been into the sun and during rush hour. Um, no. When we take the train together, we usually take the L to Castro station and then transfer to the F, which is slower in terms of potential miles per hour but is above ground so it doesn't have tunnel issues like the subway. It also takes us much closer to our respective buidlings than the F, which I guess is a good thing. Today, for the hell of it, I decided to take the L all the way to Embarcadero. Just to see. I live for danger, y'know. Remarkably, it only stopped between tunnels once, and I got to work faster than had I taken the F. Yay me.
The point is, in Embarcadero my eyes were again drawn to that damn screen above
the kiosk. Y'know how there's that old sitcom which you almost never watch, but
when you stumble upon it it's always that episode you've already seen? As I approached, it
was once again playing that damn Patriot trailer, the one which opens with
the apparent homage to Last of the Mohicans—i.e., burly hero running through
the woods in slow motion. (At least Daniel Day-Lewis was kinda cute, unlike Mel.)
I waited to see what would happen next, pleased to find that willingly watching the
trailer did absolutely nothing to change my lack of interest in the movie. A 160-minute
If I really had a point, it would be this: after the trailer was a brief <buzzword>interstitial</buzzword> for the responsible company, Orion Outdoor Media. So now I know the devil's
new name.
I'd obviously rather not get ill at all, but since I'm unlikely to escape, I can't help but wish it was happening right now. It's going to be so lonely being sick by myself. |
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Wednesday, 11 April 2001 (taste the floor) 7:56am Madeline's sick, so I left early and drove so I could park in the Batcave. That's my main prerequisite for driving to work, being able to do so before the traffic builds up and being able to park for free. Otherwise, I probably would have taken the bus. (No, I'm not really trying to justify having driven today. It just seems like it.) I broke the cardinal rule of working out yesterday: I hadn't recharged my discman's batteries the night before. Nor had I made sure that my backup batteries were functional. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn't discover this until I started running on the treadmill and my discman, in turn, stopped running. Unlike the towel issue it wasn't worth a trip back home; I just kept the headphones on anyway, gritted my teeth and dealt with it. At least the gym's stereo plays KFOG, which I find slightly more palatable than Top 40. So, y'know, I deal. I'm getting a pretty good idea of who the regulars are. Nothing too scary, and I've been left alone, which is all I really want. One guy seemed to be staring at me last night, but it's entirely possible I was just being paranoid. (Either that, or he was actually looking at...nah, that's too easy.)
Probably won't be going tonight, what with there being a new episode Voyager and all. Besides,
I gotta pace myself a little.
So now, 45 minutes later (and 15 minutes before when it was originally supposed to start),
my phone has not rung nor has there been a knock at my door. They're doing this to fuck
with me. I know it.
Meanwhile, Kozmo.com is shutting down. One less excuse for the neighbors to leave the gate open.
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