Though there were surely others, the only dream I remember involved the current manuscript, the one with several months' worth of handwritten edits waiting to get typed in, burning up. I don't cry in dreams that often (which is surprising given how easily it happens in real life, as it had before sleep and after), but I did then.

9:04pm

Because the allnighter on Saturday evidently wasn't enough, we had an office holiday kitchen party gathering thing today. They did, anyway. I stayed at my desk. Didn't budge. And it was still going on when I left for the day.

Things change: for assorted reasons, my uncle's wife has vetoed my visit, so I'll be staying in the Bay Area for xmas. A bummer, but it also means I'll have more time to work on my apartment-cleaning project (wherein I clean the apartment during these precious, silent hours), and Vash and I are already talking about hiding from the holiday together. Which actually goes against one of my original reasons for wanting to leave town in the first place but, as I say, things change. And perhaps not every decision I make is the correct one—in fact, I'd wager that nine out of every ten decisions I've made lately has been incorrect—but I have to do what feels right at the moment. At this moment, it's what feels right.

Thomas Roche has asked me to read at San Francisco Sex Information's My Sucky Valentine next year. It's nice to have a gig lined up. I haven't read since the It's So You show in October.

Had dinner with Ennui at Old Jerusalem, after which we went to a bar down the street from her apartment. They couldn't make a Bloody Mary (temptation and deceit, the order of the day), so I had a Cappuccino Tini in hopes that something with the word "cappuccino" would include caffeine. Sadly, I don't think it did. It would have come in handy an hour or two later.

I've finally made a page with links to my online articles, currently just Medialoper and Eros Zine. Mostly Medialoper.

4:17pm

I keep asking myself: why am i even trying? And I don't have a good answer.

4:32pm

After hemming and hawing over it (mostly hawing) for the last couple of weeks, I've decided that I am in fact going to Grass Valley for xmas. The only decent offer I've gotten to stay in town has been from Ennui for xmas day, and even that would still result in me being alone a lot of the time. (I don't know what Vash is doing. She hasn't asked me, and I haven't asked her.) I figure if I'm going to be alone, it might as well be in different surroundings. So, Grass Valley it is. Besides, I have so much to do. every time I look at the manuscript, I'm surprised by how much handwritten stuff there is on it, both edits and entirely new passages. Chapters 2 ("Aftermath") and 4 ("Flame") will be going serious overhauls, much more rich and expansive than they were before. I hope. I also recognize that a lot of it will probably get edited out prior to publication, that there's no way a first-timer will be allowed something so wordy. And that's okay. I'll deal with it when the time comes. For now, I've gotta write it for me, make it the story I need to tell.

Either at my uncle's place or elsewhere in town, I'm hoping to get a lot of work done. He's going to be gone a lot of the time himself, and I have no idea where his wife is going to be at any given time. I know my father will be there for some period of time, so that'll actually be kind of neat. According to family lore, this is the same uncle who turned my mom onto grass in the early eighties to help her cope with my father leaving her. Like most of my family's lore I'm not entirely sure I buy it (which is why so much of what I do goes on record—if some descendant wonders if I really did, say, drink Vash's urine, then it'll be right there in Chapter 16, "Malediction and Pee Play"), but I'd like to think it's true, and I probably wouldn't say no if he busted out a pipe while I was there. Kinda doubt it'll happen, though.

Anyway, though I'm hoping to be productive, I'm also anticipating time for reading. To that end, I went to the library today and stocked up. Which is ridiculous, since I'm at no loss for reading material, either from the library or otherwise. Currently checked out on my account is Time Out's 1000 Films to Change Your Life , The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction and The Official Razzie Movie Guide, all of which are staying in my bathroom at home during the trip, and for more portable I also have The Best American Essays 2006, One Hand Jerking: Reports from an Investigative Satirist by Paul Krassner, The Shooting Script by Laurence Klavan, Slaughterhouse-Five, Slapstick and A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut (the last of which I've finished and need to return), and Willie: An Autobiography by Willie Nelson and Bud Shrake (also finished and needing to be returned) Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs. Of course, realistically I'll have time to read maybe half of one of them, but, you know, better safe than sorry. Besides, what else am I going to put in Phoebe's trunk? I'm also expecting to listen to PJ Harvey's White Chalk a lot, as it's currently sharing heavy rotation duty with Willie's Phases and Stages. There's a connection if you squint and use your imagination hard enough.

sometime after midnight

and she said,
"losing love is like a window in your heart
everybody sees you're blown apart
everybody feels the wind blow..."

The Ex wrote last night. She gave birth to a boy last on Thursday, December 13 at half past five. His name is Alexander, or Xander for short. It's a reference to the character Xander Harris from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show I introduced her to after Howard did the same for me back in '98. She surely would have encountered Buffy on her own, so I can't rightly take any sort of credit for planting the seed of that decision. On the other hand, she also tells me that "he really seems to like Peter Gabriel's Passion." I'll gladly take credit for that one, since it was one of the first albums I played for her when we first started dating in '90. If Xander gets into Neil Young or Bob Dylan via his mother, that can also be traced back to me, and I'm fine with it.

11:17am

I was up so late on Saturday night because I was determined to ride out the company's holiday party for as long as I could, and Ennui was game. Sadie left around four, and Ennui and I made it until half past four at the afterparty, by which point most of the crowd had thinned out considerably. An hour or so earlier, we were sitting on a couch, and an employee I'd started referring to as my archnemesis was sitting across from a couple of their friends. We have this incredibly immature and high-school-clique thing where we never acknowledge each others' presence unless we have no choice, and evidently we'd decided that we had the choice at the party, since they were the only employee who didn't at least say hello to me. (Nor did I say hello to them. So you see.) At one point I got up to use the restroom. After I was in line for about fifteen seconds, I looked back at the couch and saw that my archnemesis was chatting up Ennui. I couldn't help but laugh.

A few days earlier, it had occurred me that I was doing well with the whole passing thing lately, that people had been calling me "Miss" and using the female pronoun and all that other unenlightened binary stuff to which I cling so desperately. So, of course, the universe had to take me to task for it at the party, much as it had in '05. To quote from my unpublished femme visibility essay:

December 2005. I worked for a major gay porn video-on-demand company. Our holiday party was a huge industry event, and I was dressed to my equivalent of the nines, lots of fishnet and black lace, complete with kitty ears. The theme of the party was the Gold Rush, and my girlfriend Vash was wearing a gorgeous period dress she’d rented from the San Francisco Opera. We were a striking pair, straddling the line between classy and slutty, which was how we liked it.

While Vash was talking to someone else, I wandered off. A woman grabbed me by the arm, lead me to a table where her friends were sitting, placed a digital camera into my hand, and said in a bubbly voice: “We need a drag queen to take a picture of us.”

Christ. What was it, the ears? I bristled: “Then you'll have to keep looking, because I'm not a drag queen.”

In a tone which implied that I was edging seriously close to ruining her good mood, she replied: “All right, all right, how do you define yourself?”

I should have told her it was none of her business and that she shouldn't leap to conclusions, of course. I had that right. (Sort of. The last thing I needed was my boss hearing that I'd insulted some important muckety-muck out of what would be pejoratively described as political correctness.) There were quite a few drag queens in attendance, looking considerably more...drag-queeny than myself, but to some people, one boy in a dress is the same as another. Aloud, I said: “I'm transsexual.”

Rolling her eyes heavenward, she said: “Fine. We need a ‘transsexual’ to take a picture of us.”

I'm weak, so I did.

Jesus. I immediately replied: no. i'm her girlfriend. Which is not semantically correct—I was her date, but I'm not Ennui's girlfriend and she's not mine—but I needed to get the point across that I was not a boy, and using the word "girlfriend" seemed the best way to do it. I also started rummaging in my bag for my wallet, which he noticed me doing.

He then said: you look like this guy i know named andre.

I briefly flashed on my friend Steven Schwartz, who is often mistaken for another man (and possibly a Russian mobster) named Andrei. This felt a tad more offensive, though. I found my wallet and got out my driver's license, which looks just like me down to the pink-and-white squid, and showed him bit where it says "Sex: F." I said: see? that's an f, not an m. that means i'm a girl, not a boy, and most definitely not a boy named andre. He looked unconvinced, and I turned away.

A while later Ennui and I were at a table, and I commented aloud that I almost hoped that guy tried something again, because I was feeling especially catty. (And not just because I was in kitty ears.) Lo and behold, he showed up a minute later and said: are you sure you're not andre? I raised my palm to him—talk to the paw!—and said: you are really pushing it with me. just walk away. now. And he did, surely wondering why Andre was being such a dick.

It was about half past one when somebody said to me: you get more action than any man i know! I flinched a little—whether it was the intention or not, it sounded like I was once again being called a man—and just said: thanks. I guess it was because when they first met me I was dating Collette, and then Vash, and now Ennui, and for all they knew I was also schtupping Sadie, when in fact she was just a platonic friend I brought along for the ride. (I'd planned on bringing Vash when the party was originally announced in September, and then things went south with us and I was dating Ripley so I asked her, and then things went so scarily south with her that they were practically north, at which point I decided to invite Ennui, whom I hadn't seen since shortly before I met Ripley in early October (and if I'd stayed with Ripley dating Ennui wouldn't be an option at all). Things have improved between Vash and I recently—we sorta kinda conditionally got back together on the morning of the party, in fact, not the way I'd hoped and not in a way that gives me a lot of hope, but in a way that has to be tried—but I'd had to get my guest names for the party turned in a couple weeks in advance, and besides, Ennui still sounded the most appealing as a date, since there was still a level of casualness between us, a lack of baggage or issues. It would be uncomplicated, and we could just enjoy ourselves, and I really needed that more than anything else. At the party, I gave Ennui a recap of the past couple months, the first time I'd tried to tell the story.) I then told Sister Edith what the person had said, and Sister Edith wasted no time in telling them why what they said hurt me. They copped to it, apologized, and as they were turning away they said: god, people are so sensitive these days! That must be it.

As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversatiom.

Then again, it could just be the sleep dep talking; I haven't gotten much sleep these past couple of nights. I'm really not sure why I didn't sleep much last night, except that I was awake more often than not. (The Bad Movie Night feature had been It's a Wonderful Life, which should be enough to put anyone to sleep. Seriously, that movie's entire reputation is based on the last half-hour. The rest of the movie is boring financial talk the likes of which would not be seen again until The Phantom Menace.) Saturday night I hadn't gotten much sleep, since I didn't get to bed until around five, and was awake again before eight. Ironically enough, that was one of the few times in recent memory in which I might have gotten more sleep if I'd been at home, what with the bad people upstairs being on vacation. It's been quiet, blessedly peaceful and quiet. As it was, I was at Ennui's. Her bed is just about the most comfortable ever and it was plenty warm in spite of how coldness of the night, and I've certainly slept through the morning sounds of the coffeeshop below her apartment before, but for some reason it just wasn't happening. It was okay, though, since it made more conscious of body against mine. Ennui's a full-contact sleep-cuddler, a heat-seeking missile. Which is how I like it.

Increasingly I've been understanding the concept of the cold bed, of what it's like to wish there was someone in it with you. Maddy and I tended to keep to ourselves when sleeping, with our own blankets and all, and I'm fairly certain that The Ex and I did the same thing. (It's been almost nine years since I shared a bed with The Ex, so my memories of such things are a tad fuzzy.) Certainly a common theme in both cases was that they would spread out, and I'd usually be teetering on the edge of the bed. As a result, I actually rather liked it when one of them would spend the night elsewhere—The Ex went to Fresno fairly regularly, and I think Maddy went to the Midwest solo at least once without me—since it meant I got to spread out and take advantage of what was a rather meager bed. Now I have even more room since it's a queen-sized bed (courtesy of my last decent neighbors, whom I miss more than ever), but it just feels lonelier. And colder, for some reason. It wasn't until Vash that I really began to appreciate sharing a bed with someone on a regular basis. (I dated Collette for six months before Vash, but for various reasons, I think we actually spent the entire night together once, maybe twice. I wasn't comfortable at her place, and she wasn't comfortable at mine. Good thing we lived so close to each other.) This doesn't I'm ready for cohabitation, not by a long shot, even though Vash still talks about us living together someday in the distant future. It's a nice thought, especially these days, but I just can't see that far ahead.

I got a notice in the mail from Wells Fargo yesterday saying that I was delinquent in my loan, the one I'd taken out to buy Phoebe. I was supposed to be on automatic payment, but evidently that wasn't happening, so I went to the Wells Fargo around the corner and talked to the same girl who'd facilitated the loan in the first place. She took care of it for me, getting the loan people to eliminate the late fee and remove the delinquency from my credit, since the error was on their side, not mine. Whew. Yay for nice people.

Hanging out with Vash tonight, probably going to see Ear Candy at The Dark Room, and tomorrow night I'm going to my company's holiday party with Ennui and Sadie. Eventually, this year will be over.

Turns out my company's insurance (partially) covers therapy, so I guess I'm out of excuses to not go back to The Nice Lady.

Tonight is the Geminid meteor shower.

If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so.

We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart.

If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for busting out and gettin' free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way
Though the bitter taste still lingers on
From the night I tried to make her stay.

I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive or else I'm gettin' soft.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time.

Bob Dylan,
"If You See Her, Say Hello"

I hadn't taken any Advil or anything before the tightening, and while I didn't hurt nearly as much as the initial squidification, when it was over I was still loopy from the pain. (As opposed to loopy from pain medication.) Sadie and I had a work date planned, but just going home to my warm bed sounded nice, especially since I knew I wouldn't be getting any work done. On the other hand, I was already planning on staying the night at Sadie's and was going to be driving to work the next morning anyway. So, I split the difference—I went to Sadie's got into my jammies, and crashed on her couch. Didn't even bother to start my laptop, instead reading my current book (Willie Nelson: An Autobiography) and falling asleep. It wasn't as warm or comfortable as my bed with Perdita would have been, but it felt like the right place to be. Sleeping on someone's couch with a still-sensitive squid, though? Tricky. I dreamed, though, and I don't feel especially tired today, so I guess it worked.

2:55pm

Just hung out for an hour or so with my pal Matthue, whom I haven't seen since he moved away from San Francisco in early 2004. He was in town for a reading last night, which I wasn't able to attend because of the squidwork, and though going to his afterparty was a third option, I was in absolutely no condition to deal with it at the time. He came by my office to retrieve some boxes of his stuff which have been in my closet since he left town. We went to the post office near my office so he could mail them back to his current home in Brooklyn, and the woman behind the counter commented on just about every aspect of our appearance, from his yarmulke to my quasi-Siouxsie eye makeup. (Man, if there isn't a tribute band called Quasi-Siouxsie yet, there really oughta be.) She also said I reminded her of Daryl Hannah in Splash, mostly because of my hair. That's a new one—usually it's Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner that I get compared to—but it's high praise all the same.

5:36pm

At the Panera Bread near my office. I have a table with an outlet, a mocha, ample food options, they're open until half past nine...and their wifi won't let me on. Or, at least, it won't let me reach the outside world. Every other system I've tried to get onto with this laptop, be it my network at home or at work or at Sadie's or The Dark Room or the ones I occasionally leech onto at the Sea Biscuit or Divas—no problem. But this one, no. It worked fine for my old laptop with XP, but with this new one running Vista, no such luck. Is that the reason? No, because there is no good reason. It's just how things are, there's no point in asking the employees, considering the blank stare I received when I asked for a mocha. It's just how things are, random fate, and it makes me want to scream just a little, and reflect on the fact that I can't go home and work there because of the noise upstairs. I'm not allowed to have my home for solitude or productivity, because of them, because of their giraffe and their own lead feet. I ask for too much, it would seem. Vash asked me to go to the pony munch with her tonight, but I declined, because I realized it would make me feel sad. (Which then begs the question, what wouldn't lately?) Even though I'm hobbled I'm still going to stay and work for the next few hours, because trying to find somewhere else at this moment would be the equivalent of trying to steal the other dog's bone, and I've committed far too many Aesop Violations these days as it is. I guess starting from zero isn't so bad once you get used to it, if you get used to it.

9:10pm

Back at my office where, thankfully, my laptop gets onto the wifi just fine. I don't know why it won't at the Panera, but it doesn't, and I should be grateful that it works fine everywhere else. And I am. I do ultimately understand the importance of gratitude for what I have as opposed to the inevitable despair of longing for what I don't or can't have. I'm better at it than I used to be, for sure.

There are pictures of Vash all over my workspace, along the bottom of my monitor and on the wall to my right, some of us together and some of her by herself, some in which I can see how difficult things were at the time and some in which he we seem almost impossibly in sync. I should probably take them down, but I don't want to. Not yet. Just the thought of it makes me teary, which is probably all the more reason why it needs to be done.

I've printed out the current draft of the Medialoper article I've been working on, that I pretty much threw myself into to give myself something to do (and if the net result is more words, then it's all worth it, yes?) and now I'm heading to Divas to edit it. I've considering going to Bondage A-Go-Go, especially since The Glas Kat is literally around the corner from my office, but, no, even though the squid is looking as good is it gets. As ironic as this may seem, I don't go to goth clubs alone anymore when I'm sad. I'm not that cruel to myself.

Well, most of the time I try not to be. But there's really no telling.

I've officially declined the job of running the Tranny Stage at the Pride '08. Most lessons don't stick with me, but that one sure did.