|
|
< 8/11 8/12 8/13 8/14 8/15 8/16 8/17 8/18 8/19 8/20 >
|
Monday, 20 August 2001 (underwater love) 11:13pm I had today off (and tomorrow as well) so I went to Berkeley this morning to the coffee house where I've been told the mid-to-late eighties best friend works. To engage in some IRL stalking. It was him, all right. It's safe to say he didn't recognize me. Then again, even if I hadn't changed my chemical composition and fashion sense over the last few years, it's been at least ten years since he's last laid eyes on me—and I doubt he was paying much attention at the time—so I'm not at all surprised. He probably thought I was just another tranny. (Or, more generously, another tall goth girl in a town full of them. Naturally, I tend to suspect the former.) I'm still not sure why I did it at all, except to satsify a curiosity I probably shouldn't be having. Afterwards, I went back into the city to see Apocalypse Now Redux at the Evil Sony Metreon. As I was walking out of the parking garage before the movie I saw a group of kids, somewhere in their late teens. As I approached, one of them said "Oh my god" and lifted up his camera. I suddenly found something very interesting to look at across the street, giving him a clear shot at the back of my head. He made a sound of disappointment, and I looked back around to see him lowering the camera back down with a glum look on his face, his photo op ruined. I'm sure it would have been great to show to the folks back home. Look! Look! There really are people like that in San Francisco! All the same, getting clocked (tranny slang for not passing, and we all know what passing means, ja?) right before going into such an aggressively public place didn't do my nerves any favors, but I suppose it's a reality check I need whether I want it or not. The rumors of San Francisco being true may have also been amongst the thoughts going through the head of the guy who hit on me at Beyond the Pale last night. Once we managed to establish a line of communication, anyway, which wasn't easy. The first act hadn't started yet so hearing each other wasn't a problem; rather, I couldn't understand what the hell he was saying, as he was drunk and (I was soon to discover) a recent import from England. His opening line was something to the effect of "All alone, are ya?" It all sounded like one word to me, and frankly, I wasn't even sure if it was English. Four or five attempts later he rephrased it and I finally understood what he was asking, and by the time he probably wished he hadn't asked in the first place. After a bit more small talk (during which any doubt in his mind about my actual gender was surely cleared up by my voice) he moved on elsewhere. And that was before I'd put in earplugs. As soon as K.K. Null came on, I knew I'd made a mistake in not bringing any, a mistake I should have known better than to make. It's always a good idea to wear earplugs to a concert, but doubly so when harsh power electronics are involved. Fortunately, cocktail napkins did the trick. Yay me. After Apocalypse Now Redux today I headed to the Castro Theater, where I met up with Maddy to try our luck with a double feature of Woody Allen's best, Manhattan and my personal favorite Stardust Memories. Thankfully, the crowd wasn't anywhere near as catty as they are for, well, just about any other movie. Just another reason to give the upcoming revival of Funny Girl a miss. Anyway, at one point during Stardust Memories Maddy described Jessica Harper's look (dark glasses, dressed in black, arms folded, leaning against the wall) as "Sherilyn-goth." I couldn't have been more honored.
|
||
 | ||
Sunday, 19 August 2001 (the real thing) 7:30am I got home yesterday morning from the gym (first time in three or four weeks) at about half past ten, and I was showered, clothed and shaved (the first time in over two weeks on that) by about half past eleven, whereupon we got to work on assembling the new dresser, a job which we misestimated at a couple hours and wound up taking five, including a trip to Walgreen's to get a bottle of wood glue as we decided not to risk using the ketchup packets of glue provided. It's ironic (or pathethic, I'm not sure which) that we can put together a piece of furniture requiring dowels and hammers and (unprovided) allen keys but I can't for the life of me figure out what kind of new motherboard and CPU I should get for my ailing computer. Aren't I supposed to be more modern than that? Then again, after the apocalypse I suppose there'll be more need to build things to keep rags in than superfast computer systems. For now, though... We finished just in time for me to drive to Foothill College in Los Altos Hills for the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival. Maddy elected not to join me, as sitting through a couple hours of weird short films and trailers and old commercials and Oscar only knows what else didn't exactly sound like her idea of a good time. To me, of course, it sounds like a great time, and indeed it was. Just my luck, though, the last clip to be shown (and the only familiar one; the rest were much more obscure) before the lights came up for the break was the trailer for the needs-no-introduction Glen or Glenda?; being in full battle gear, I felt as conspicuous a Jew after a showing of Triumph of the Will, especially as I started putting on my black angora sweater. Maybe they just thought I was an especially devoted fan.
|
||
| ||
Saturday, 18 August 2001 (zombie eaters) 7:35am I should probably stop listening to so much Coil. It's doing fucked up things to my dreams.
Naaah.
|
||
| ||
Friday, 17 August 2001 (surprise! you're dead!) 2:00pm So it turns out "Deep Fried Taro Root Fish" is, well, deep fried taro root in the shape of a fish. It's terribly cute. And damn good, too. 7:22pm Roughly a week after she did whatever it was she did to it, Mina's paw seems much better—tellingly, she isn't favoring it anymore, which is the best sign we could hope for. Thanks to everyone who wrote wished her well. It's appreciated.
|
||
| ||
Thursday, 16 August 2001 (falling to pieces) 7:44am "Origami" is Japanese for "kitty toy." 8:53am I brought in a roughly 2'x 5' strip of black bedsheet left over from the bedroom wallpapering project last year, and it's now covering up the direct light coming from the hallway. There's still more ambient light than I care for, but as tempting as it is to simply block the entire window, it is nice to know when somebody's outside. Gotta be prepared for the tour groups. 4:56pm There's a new dresser at home, still boxed up, awaiting assembly. The apartment's been needing one since...well, since The Ex moved hers out in mid-'99. There was some talk about getting one early last year, but like so many things in that time period it disappeared in a torrent of drama. We finally set our sights on getting one some months back, but it took this long because...well...the one we wanted was perpetually out of stock. There were others, but this one is, um, black. So it matches the walls. Stop looking at me like that.
|
||
| ||
Wednesday, 15 August 2001 (epic) 7:42am The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. 9:01am A light has been installed in the hallway outside the office. Whether a new fixture has been put in or an existing one replaced, I don't know, but the net result is a severe increase in the ambient light in my office. As tempting as it is in my current mood to conclude that this was done purely to annoy me, that's surely not the case, and a better question is why they're going to the trouble of little fixes like that when we're presumably moving out of this building in a few months anyway. I could ask the office manager, but there really wouldn't be much point. Probably some people complained that it was the least well-lit part of the building. Heaven forbid.
In the meantime—that is, until we move and I'm placed in a cublicle with
a buzzing, retina-burning overhead flourescent light—I've blocked out
the disc of the light as best as I can by putting a black altar cloth up in my window, the kind
that Hot Topic used to sell but probably doesn't anymore because of its uselessness
as a rave accessory. Not perfect, but it'll have to do.
I shouldn't complain. Things could be worse. That's my character flaw du jour,
I think, is that I can't be happy with the way things are. I expect more than
my fair share. Worse, sometimes I can't see what's in front of me because I don't want to.
never, NEVER ask yourself why you bother. you know better than that.
|
||
| ||
Tuesday, 14 August 2001 (from out of nowhere) 10:25am I saw a license plate which read LVE2PLY. That's an aspect of toilet paper preference which doesn't get nearly as much attention as the rolling debate.
(Get it? It's an abbreviation of either "live to play" or "love to play," meant to tell
the world that they're fun-loving and carefree, but I'm
being clever and interpreting it as "love 2-ply," which suggests an entirely different...oh, never mind.)
Oh well. Drugs are bad.
It's just so easy to fall. To think you have a grasp of how things are, that maybe...
|
||
| ||
Monday, 13 August 2001 (tenderness of wolves) 9:08am Why is it Friday the thirteenth that's supposed to be cursed? Everybody likes Fridays. Wouldn't Monday the thirteenth make more sense?
Please let me know if I'm sounding too Seinfeldian.
That said, the collective opinion of our three (3) scales
is that my weight is ~185. Whatever it is I'm doing
right, I should probably keep doing it. Not bad for not having
worked out for the last few weeks, but that doesn't mean I don't need
to, either. What with the iron being hot and all.
Not that confidence is a bad thing. Maddy's observed that I've been displaying a lot more of it lately, and I think she's right. It's a combination of the corrected hormone levels, experience, and a sense of inevitability—I know where I'm headed, and I know I'll be happier when I get there, and there's no point in putting it off any longer than necessary. Besides, I like it, y'know? That degree of uncertainty that all transsexuals have when starting out (at least the ones that are honest with themselves) is gone. I'm doing the right thing, and I'm glad I made the decisions I made. And, yeah, I could look a lot worse, particularly considering how I feared I'd end up. (Hi, this is me being shallow.) Between my existence at the time as a fat, ugly boy or a potential future as a fat, ugly girl, the latter still seemed the more acceptable option. After all, one out of three ain't bad, right?
But I could still be doing a lot better, and need to remember that I'm
not in the real world. I'm in San Francisco, usually amongst people
who are inclined to be supportive. I guess I'll experience something
closer to reality when I finally come out at work. Or tell my auto
mechanic. Little things like that. Historically, things have always
gone wrong when I've opened my mouth.
The first season of Twin Peaks (minus the pilot episode, natch) is finally coming out on DVD, though. That makes living with Jar-Jar Binks as a cultural meme a little more tolerable. I've also discovered that Streets of Fire is on DVD—has been for a few years now, in fact—but I'll explain the significance of that later.
|
||
| ||
Sunday, 12 August 2001 (something in the air) 8:30am We'd been thinking about going to the 9pm IMAX showing of Apocalypse Now Friday night, just to get it over with. No telling how long it'll be playing; for as much advance hype as there's been in it's only at one theater, and that's never a good sign. Typically for me, though, as the day progressed, I grew nervous about it. Friday night crowds at a muliplex are never a good thing, and there were sure to be at least a handful of very annoying people in the theater with us. Besides, it was over three hours long, which meant that we might not catch the last train and would have to take the less frequent Owl bus home. Which in and of itself wouldn't be a problem, except that Phred's stand-up thing was the next day, and geting to bed at 2am would not do. So we decided to give it a miss—I am in fact taking the 20th off, so I'll probably go then—and then had to figure out what we were going to do with ourselves. Going home didn't sound half bad, although we've also been wanting to see The Anniversary Party for a while now, which would certainly be a much less stressful experience than the other movie. As we were walking through the parking lot near my building (the one which on Saturdays is home to the farmer's market Tania and I used to call "The Hippie Vegetable Thing"); a woman driving a jeep pulled up next to us, clearly trying to get our attention. Not that we were sure at first, since there were other people in the lot, and there's nothing more embarrassing than waving back to someone who's actually waving at someone else. We've all been there. Nope, it was us she was referring to, though we still didn't recognize her until she identified herself as one of our neighbors from across the street. I could have sat down next to her on the muni and it never would have struck me, but she could see us in a parking lot recognize us. I wonder if that says more about our unsociability or our...um...unique look. My relentless kvetching about the upstairs neighbors notwithstanding, we're not wholly unfriendly, and I've alwas been curious about her, mainly because when she sees me from across the street she always smiles and waves. It's just never been taken any further, as neither party has ever walked across the street and identified themselves. Presently, she offered us a ride home, which pretty much made our decision for us. As will often happen, we compared notes how about long we've been in that part of town (we carefully avoided talking about our problems with our immediate neighbors), the city itself, et cetera. Coincidentally to a similar discussion happening elsewhere, she brought up the disillusionment many of our friends have with the city and the threatened exodus. We both agreed that their points are valid, and we wish them well, but that we're sticking around for now. We'd actually been on the road for a while before introductions were made. We'd of course been at work all day and I was in boi mode—not to mention I'd just been zapped a few days previous—for a split second I thought to myself i can't introduce myself as sherilyn, not looking like this, and then I realized that I could, and did. Introducing myself by the other name just wouldn't be right—it's only appropriate for situations requiring paperwork to back it up. In any event, she didn't bat an eye. I didn't think she would. Speaking of electro, for the four hours it took on Tuesday night, you can't necessarily tell by looking that it happened so recently. I'm healing up faster and faster, probably because he's not having to cover as much territory to clear me. I think he was also bit more focused that usual—there weren't nearly as many leftovers as usual, and he got all the dark hairs, which are most important. I still haven't shaved yet, in spite of going out in full battle gear yesterday and again today. I think that definitely qualifies as progress.
|
||
| ||
Saturday, 11 August 2001 (yankee hotel foxtrot) 9:30pm Off to watch the meteors.
It's been a better day than usual for late.
Also worth it today was going to see Phred performing standup at the San Francisco Comedy College's graudation show. She did a damn good job, particularly for her first time on stage. We almost didn't make it because of a scare this morning involving a possible cut on the bottom of Mina's right paw, but upon closer examination it was downgraded to a slight skinning, so we felt more comfortable going. And I'm very glad we did, because she asked us to be there, and I didn't want to let her down. (Chas and Rae also made it, amongst others.) The thing is, during my shaky attempt at standup at an open mike on Good Friday in '97 (and it turned out to be a crucifixion double-header) (badda-bing! I still got it!), both Pandora and Louise said they'd be there, but the only visitor I recognized was Hale-Bopp out the window. If memory serves, The Ex was out of town, which was probably just as well since an underlying theme of my material was my lack of faith in our relationship. If I ever do it again—and, typically, I'm getting the "Ooooh, I wanna do that!" vibe—I suspect it'll be about different things. Though I think I'll leave the poop jokes to Phred. Hey, I could never compete.
|
||
| ||