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Monday, 20 August 2007 (not enough for two) 4:22pm Whew! Bambi Lake walked by and didn't recognize me. Thank you, squid! 9:12pm Bad Movie Night was pretty painful, as only Superman IV can be. After a while, Rimma and I just started indulging ourselves with gratuitous Arrested Development references. That makes everything better. Feh, though. I wanna be at KrOB's Film Farm right now watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a movie I love. Instead, I'm doing the right thing, staying at home and working on my own stuff, writing the solo show. I'll be glad in the long run (i.e. two months from today when it opens) that I stayed focused, but, as I say, feh. Wanna go play, go watch the funny movie.
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Sunday, 19 August 2007 (thoughtless kind) 2:39pm There'd been some talk of Vash and I doing ecstasy last night, which we haven't done since her birthday in 2005, but it didn't happen. We also considered a somewhat animal-themed party at the Citadel or the big reopening of Femina Potens, but instead stayed in and crashed, as will happen. We went jogwalking along the beach and into Golden Gate Park this morning, and now are both attempting to some work done before Bad Movie Night this evening. It helps that the bad people upstairs are elsewhere. Note to self: don't ask about what you don't want to know.
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Saturday, 18 August 2007 (someone to do your dirty work) 5:46pm After writing the 5:01pm entry yesterday at the Mission Creek Cafe, I went around the corner to Epsersento and met Ennui for tapas, just the beginning of what would be roughly twenty hours of extreme hipsterism. But that's okay, because the tapas (which I've never had before) were yummy and I like hanging out with her. From there we went to the Make Out Room—where, if anyone watching me go inside thought to themselves that's a man, they kept it to themselves—to see Mortified Live, a show of people reading embarrassing love letters and diaries and such from when they were teenagers. A lot of fun, and I'm tempted to dig into certain boxes in my closet to see I have anything that would qualify. Ennui and I then went to Ritual (glorp!) to get caffeinated beverages, then returned to her place. Rather than drive around looking for free residential parking, I parked in one of the metered spaces out front, since we'd be gone or at least awake again by the time they became operational at nine the next morning. Her cat Figaro had a relatively early appointment to get shaved and groomed on Saturday, and since her boyfriend is out of the country and she doesn't have a car, I offered to help Ennui sedate and transport Figaro. The second part was easy, the first not so much; he's a cranky cat in the best of circumstances, and did not appreciate our repeated attempts to put a pill down his throat. I have the scratches on my hand to prove it, but that's no biggie; I always have scratches just from playing with Perdita. Eventually Ennui crushed the pill and mixed it with water in a non-pointy syringe, which we managed to get down the gullet without him spitting it back up. Thus drugged, with his nictating membranes showing themselves, we took him to groomer. Their specific instructions had been to drug him and bring him in between nine and ten; we got there around a quarter past nine. The groomer's assistant said the groomer wasn't in yet, but, assured us that she would be soon. Probably so far as he knew. Swell. The groomer had told Ennui when she made the appointment that Figaro would probably be ready around noon, so with nothing to do but wait, we joined the hip urban crowd at Boogaloos for breakfast. I've never been there before, usually because of the insanely long lines outside, but we got seated almost immediately. (Yay for being a party of two rather than seven!) The Tofu Lover's Scramble with peanut-ginger sauce was phenomenal, though I wasn't too impressed by the green vegetarian herb-cream gravy they put on their biscuits, which Ennui tells me is one of their most popular dishes. That's my City for ya. It's biscuits and gravy, classic white-trash food, but you can feel good about it because it's green and vegetarian! Man, when someone perfects vegan tuna casserole, they'll be able to retire young. From there we walked to the Community Thrift Store, where someone very similar to me in size had recently donated a leather skirt and pair of leather pants, both by The Gap. (I'm such a sucker to brand names in thrift stores.) Ennui ran interference for me while I tried on the pants in spite of the eternally vexing lack of a dressing room; they fit around the waist but were way way way too tight around the thighs, and the skirt just didn't look right at all. Clearly, I need to work harder on my character. After swinging by The Dark Room so I could drop off the next couple weeks' worth of Bad Movies, we went to the Foreign Cinema, another hip Mission joint which I'd never been to before but which Ennui's fond of. No movie was playing. They get points for being one of the only places in town which puts a celery stalk in their Bloody Mary. Not quite as good as the Orbit Room or as cost-effective as Marlena's, but strong, and that counts for something. Ennui called the groomer, who told her that they got started on Figaro late, so the medication had worn off and he was being super-cranky. Well, yeah. The poor guy. We'd done exactly what Ennui had been told to do, and there was little else we could do. Having exhausted most of the time-killing options in the Mission (and me wanting to take her someplace new), we ventured into the Tenderloin to The Magazine. After some hardcore browsing, including finding a new copy of Fetish #10 and the almost-as-sought April '99 issue of Bizarre for cubicle food, we headed back to where all roads lead.
It was pushing two o'clock when we sat down at Mission Creek, and Ennui's humor was understandably starting to fray, but she kept it together remarkably well. I worked on the Gawker stuff until her phone finally rang twenty minutes later, and, thankfully, it was the news we'd been waiting for: Figaro was all shaved and ready to go. There was a little bit of drama as we picked him up, including the idiot assistant from before having difficulty hearing numbers, but the mission was accomplished. I dropped Ennui and the shaved and very cranky Figaro back at their place, then returned home.
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Friday, 17 August 2007 (on the edge of) 10:12am Vash woke around five this morning, after about eleven hours of sleep. Sometimes that's what the body needs, I guess.
The office picnic technically started fifteen minutes ago, but the Great American Music Hall's box office doesn't open until half past ten, and I've waited long enough as it is to get tickets to see Low next month. So, the picnic can roll merrily on without me for a while longer. Besides, Sadie said she'd accompany me to it, and I haven't heard from her yet.
The highly stupid debate continues about what the hell I am: So, commenting on my review of WWD, [Cindy] pointed out that a person I would call a transvestite identifies as a female. Which made me ask the question of whether one should accept the gender ID of the observer, or the observed. I am, of course, the person he calls a transvestite. I'm not a transvestite. I'm a transsexual. Transvestites, at the end of the day, identify as male. I do not. I identify as female and wish to be regarded as such, even though I was born male and still have male genitals and have a frame which is not only much larger than the average female's, it's larger than the average male. That's my bad stupid genetic luck, my cross of DNA, and there's less than nothing I can do about it. Even at my skinniest, I still towered over most people. Aside from not wearing heels, this cannot be changed. It's not something I can "work harder on," to use his highly inaccurate roleplay metaphor. Especially considering that, according to his own words in the comments— ...when I saw Sherilyn outside the Make Out Room on my way in, I said to myself, "that's a man". And my next thought was "and she's really gorgeous".Which means that it wasn't my neglected voice or that I refer to being a tranny in the story; he claims to have immediately parsed me as male. So how, pray tell, can I work harder so that he accepts me as what I am? The answer, of course, is that I cannot; it's a losing battle, as it would involve trying to conform to other peoples' expectations of me, and that never works. I'm way too obstinate not to be myself, not to do my own thing, and that involves being a female in the way that comes naturally. I just can't imagine living otherwise, and, indeed, it wouldn't really be living. Might as well eat a bullet. And, of course, there's the phantom 44DDs. He raises the question of whether the accepted gender of the observed object (hi, that's me!) should be that of the object, or of the objectifier. When the objectifier can't even get basic details about the object right, their reliability goes right out the window. And yet, I continue with the ruminations— He also said that referring to me as "(s)he" in his original writeup was because On stage, she identified herself as female with a dick, and commented "I must be doing something right" when she related a compliment someone gave her on how fem she appeared. Hence the parens.Safe to say he didn't attend The Penis Issue back in June, huh? Not that it probably would have mattered if he had. Anyway, the part of the story he's referring to: As we walked out to her car, Zuki said: i've never been with a girl like you before. i honestly wasn't sure at first if you were a tranny or not. I said: that's nice to know. it means i'm doing something right.The distinction between what I said (verbatim quote, written in my notebook shortly afterward) and how he remembered/reported it is quite crucial. Zuki was not simply complimenting me on my level of femmeness, though she'd told me quite a few times over the course of the evening that she thought I was beautiful. Rather, she was saying that while she accepted me as female from the word go, she wasn't certain if I was a tranny or not. But being a tranny didn't make me less of a girl, and not "definitely a guy" by any means. The way he phrases it, however, implies that she was complimenting me on the illusion I presented. She was not, nor did she perceive it as an illusion. This is not the first time my identity as a transsexual (not transvestite, not cross-dresser) has been attacked in recent memory, nor do I suspect it will be the last. It'd be one thing if I was a slender little thing like Jezebel who's nailed the breathy sex-kitten voice without it sounding false; once she gets SRS, she'll probably be as passable as they get. (Heck, they may even let her into the Chasing Amy Social Club!) But I'm quite the lummox, which is one of the reasons it took so long for me to come out of the closet, the fear that I was too big and ungainly and nobody would ever accept me as female. That's been the case with some people, obviously. And it's only going to get worse from here, too, as I get to be more known as a writer. Even if the overall percentage remains the same, the more people who know me, the more people who are going to refuse to accept my gender identity, who claim that their opinion can overrule what I've known deep down for my entire life and spent the last decade attempting to the best of my ability to achieve. My skin is growing thicker, but it still hurts, and it'll always hurt. I'm not stopping, though. I won't let them, and if they're too blind or ignorant to accept me for what I truly am, that's their loss, not mine.
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Thursday, 16 August 2007 (where it's warm) 11:12pm My plans for this evening involved coming home, getting some writing done (both on the solo show and an assignment from Annalee for a new Gawker site), and then probably hitting the Power Exchange, since we hae a sumb stupid office picnic tomorrow at 10am, so I don't have to get up super-early. As is so often the case, plans don't go they they're intended. Vash and I went as lightweight as we could to the Patti Smith show the other night, including me carrying her license. Unfortunately, we're both so scatterbrained that we didn't realize until this afternoon that I never gave it back to her. So, she swung by my office after work to pick it up. Her original plan was to head back to Oakland, but she offered me a ride, so I took it. I figured it would be to the bus stop or something, but much to my surprise we went back to the Black Light District, which is the very definition of "out of her way." It was about five in the afternoon, and she came inside and we talked, first sitting on the kitchen floor for easier Perdita access. (The Ex was, shall we say, underwhelmed by the hyperaffectionate Perdita, mostly regarding her as a source of cat fur to be removed later. I'd forgotten how much she isn't a cat person; Mary was a package deal with me. The Ex liked Mary enough and she was sad when Mary died—she cried right along with me—but I think she's been perfectly happy to not have to live with a cat in the meantime. And that's cool.) Still on the kitchen floor, full clothed and under the white light, we cuddled and played a little, then napped. We were both doing that thing where you doze some, then you wake up again, almost embarrassed that you fell asleep, and then you see the other person's eyes are closed too, and you feel better about it and start dozing again. We did this for probably an hour or so before she suggested moving into the bedroom, where we fell asleep again. I awoke around ten, but she's still asleep now, pushing midnight. It's another way to spend an evening.
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Wenesday, 15 August 2007 (bruised with numb surprise) 3:07pm So very tired today. Got just shy of four hours of sleep last night, since we didn't get out of the Patti Smith show until nearly a quarter past midnight. It was worth it, a fantastic concert, even if it got a little ugly during the encore of "Rock and Roll Nigger" when a fight nearly busted out between a drunk old-school lesbian and a guy she was trying to shove her way past. They'd been shoving into Vash and I previously, so I can't say I was surprised. I'd joked earlier to Horehound that the mosh pit would start when she played "Gloria;" I was off by one song.
For most of the show, Patti wore jeans and a long, loose-fitting white t-shirt. At one point, she was lit from behind, creating a silhouette in her shirt. It was one of the sexiest things I've ever seen at a rock concert.
Sherilyn Connelly, co-host of the $3 Bill Queer Open Mic, definitely is a guy, despite the fashionable fem dress, 44DD's and an inch of Max factor. (S)he read an entertaining autobiographical excerpt which was made even more amusing by the fact that what she is wearing in the story is what she was wearing on stage. Great stuff, I might just look up her open mike night and drop in.I'm glad he liked the story and picked up on my super-clever wardrobe choice, but, um...ignoring for a moment how insulting and reductive the "definitely is a guy" line was (for which Charlie and Cindy took him to task, bless them), what the hell? How could anyone possibly think I'm a 44DD? Okay, yeah, I've got this fucking horrendous thirty-nine inch torso which genetics gave me, but my breasts are A-cups, at the most. I don't know for sure. I don't wear a bra since my breasts are so small in spite of nine (nein!) years of hormones, so wearing one would feel like an affectation. What's more, I was wearing my Penny Lane coat, so he couldn't have gotten a clear look at them anyway. Maybe he just figured that someone my size—even someone who "definitely is a guy" as he so, well, definitively concluded, and "definitely" is a fascinating choice of adverb, like he wants to make it clear that he isn't being fooled, he wants the world to know that he knows my not-so-secret secret, it's a wonder he didn't refer to the squid as a wig—would have to have ginormous gazongas. Considering that one of the very first things I said when I went onstage was that I'm not cohosting the Queer Open Mic anymore, yet he references it twice in three sentences, suggests that he was more than a little distracted.
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Tuesday, 14 August 2007 (too profound and too pure) 3:28pm Phil and I gathered at Rimma's place yesterday to preview this Sunday's Bad Movie Night feature, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. It's a stinker, as I've known ever since I saw it in the theater twenty years ago. Saw all four of the movies when they came out, as well as the belated (and rather misbegotten) followup. I was a fan then, and I'm a fan now. Afterward, Rimma and I went to Death Guild. In addition to being the first time I've spent any time hanging out with Ilene since Audible Irregularities in June '03, it's also my first time going to a goth club since squidification, even though the squid is arguably one of the gothiest hairstyles this side of the basic Betty Page cut. I miss it sometimes. When I move beyond the squid in a few years, I may circle back around to the black-hair-and-bangs thing, which I originally got in April of '98, resulting in what may still be the biggest dramabomb ever between my mother and I, even moreso than when I came out to her a year or so later. I reprinted the emails to my mom in my diary in early 2000 for two reasons. First, I knew I'd want to refer back to them, since the written word is the only way I can remember my past emotional truths. My brain tends to gloss over bad memories, and for that I'm grateful; I wouldn't want to live with these things in my consciousness otherwise. But they're where I've been, who I am today has a direct lineage to who I was yesterday, and that should be honored. And I knew that if they didn't go in my online diary, they'd be lost otherwise; frack knows what mail client I was using at the time, or if I could possibly retrieve any of it. Second, it was a direct and intentional violation of Maddy's data embargo on my past. I was forbidden to talk or write about my life before her, especially regarding The Ex. Expecting me to act like The Ex never existed was presented as the most reasonable thing in the world, and she frequently said things to the effect of i wish you'd had more than one girlfriend before me, because then you'd understand why i don't want to hear about her. nobody ever wants to hear about past relationships. Didn't get it then, and now that I've actually had a few relationships/flings since then, I still don't. She got unhappy when I mentioned harmless trivia, like The Ex's favorite Elvis song. I don't recall why that came up, but then again Maddy mentioned once or twice that her ex-husband was heavily into Collective Soul, because most conversations have that stream-of-consciousness quality to them, factoids bubbling to the surface. I know certain weird things about Vash's ex-girlfriends, details about food preferences or parental quirks or that one of them owns a chicken. Whatever. But if Maddy didn't like the trivia, then she really didn't like it when I made any sort of reference to our meager sex life, like the time The Ex and I had a tryst in the dressing room of an outlet store in Gilroy. Indeed, she made frequent references back to that story as an example of the sort of thing which She Doesn't Need to Know About. It came up like this: Maddy and I were shopping at the Buffalo Exchange on Haight during her visit in September '99, a week which felt wonderful at the time but soon provided her with a laundry list of recriminations, including use of the soon-to-be-banned word "yum" and inappropriate Midori margarita recommendations. Anyway, I invited her to come with me into the dressing room, she declined, and I was all that reminds me, this one time the ex and i were returning home from fresno, and... Though Maddy and I had only met in person for the first time the night before, we'd talked about sex stuff quite a bit online and on the phone, and she was a published erotica writer, so it didn't cross my mind that she'd be triggered and angered by the anecdote. And, whooboy, was she ever. I've written a lot this past year, some of which I think is quite good and some of which is barely adequate, but I think what I may be most proud of is my story "Outlet," which is being published later this year in Carol Queen's anthology More Five Minute Erotica: 35 Tales of Sex and Seduction. It's not my best writing by a long shot, but it's inspired by that tryst in the outlet store in Gilroy, the one whose retelling got me into so much trouble. Of course, Maddy has cooled off and matured and generally gotten her shit together in a huge way since then, and I know she feels bad about her behavior back then. All the same, it still feels damn good to use that story, to reclaim it as grist for my mill, especially in print. Right up there with living well, art is the best revenge. In any event, The Ex was a minor factor in my correspondence with my mom about coming out. But Maddy got angry about the posts all the same, accusing me of (among other things) living in the past and neglecting the present, a present which at that moment involved her pouting in the bedroom. Yeah, why bother studying history, personal or otherwise? That only makes it more annoying when you inevitably repeat it. Best to pretend that nothing else has ever happened. (Except her previous relationship, which she talked about often and in extreme detail.) I began the experiment a week or two earlier with an entry about the first time I did acid. Maddy was staunchly anti-drug at the time; she'd recently melted down on one of the horribly butt-numbing Italian F-Castro trains when I casually suggested scoring grass from Burnout. A story about doing drugs eleven years earlier was almost as bad. Methinks seeing the Nice Lady again wouldn't be a bad idea. Tonight, Vash and I are joining Horehound to see Patti Smith at the Fillmore. Tomorrow I'm seeing The Ex, the first time since...god, I have no idea. 2004, easily, maybe even 2003. She's picking me up from NakedSword around four, and then we're to the the apartment she moved out of eight years ago and which now goes by the unwieldy and highly dorky name of the Black Light District, where we'll be joined by Vash, and the three of us will go to dinner. It'll be the first time Vash and The Ex have met, mostly because we just haven't gotten around to it until now.
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Monday, 13 August 2007 (two-step) 7:20am Went seriously emo last night. Needed to happen.
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Sunday, 12 August 2007 (starfire) 8:53pm The Queer Open Mic on Friday was a lot of fun. Sadie was a terrific feature (as I knew she would be), and the issue of me leaving wasn't brought up until the end of the show, which was how I wanted it. For most of it I wasn't even thinking in terms of it being my final night, which made it more enjoyable. Leaving makes me sad, and I'm going to miss the show, but it's the right thing to do, and it's better to leave now while things are good, before the rot sets in. That night's show was about as much of a high note as I could have hoped for. We went to Costco to get new tires for Vash's car on Saturday afternoon, and the couple of hours we spent waiting for it to get done were some of the most soul-sucking I've experienced in a long time. That place is really horrible, even on Sample day. Reading at Writers With Drinks that night more than made up for it, though. It felt like a good performance, a rockstar turn. Afterward, Vash and I went to Ritual with Charlie and Annalee (the latter of whom has offered me some other writing gigs), and then to Sadie's housewarming party. Her and Phil have been living in the house for some time now, but, you know, warming's gotta happen eventually. Rather than just be one theme, there were a few dozen that attendees could choose from, including my obvious favorite, "Sherilyn's closet." Pretty simple one for me. Sadie represented by wearing shiny black pants. Today, we went to Public Glass for a pre-Open Studios shindig, the high point of which was a glassblowing demonstration. Much fire was involved. Quite pretty.
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Saturday, 11 August 2007 (i remember) 3:20pm It's pathetic how quickly my day is ruined by an inbred, Deliverance-looking pigfucker of a Costco employee calling me "sir." Loudly.
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