Spent the night at Ennui's. She suggested returning to the Black Light District after Bad Movie Night, but I couldn't really think of a good reason to, especially since I was able to find an unmetered spot for Phoebe in Ennui's neighborhood. (I made sure Perdita had fresh food and water and a clean box before I left yesterday afternoon.) We had breakfast this morning, spent a few hours at a local coffeehouse, and now I'm working on my laptop in her kitchen. I'll be spending New Year's Eve proper with Vash. That'll go how it goes.

After much text-message debating, Ripley came over around midnight. We talked a little at first, but there was no processing, none of the heavy stuff which always got so bad and scary. Instead it was just the good stuff. She stayed the night, and left this morning.

The thing is, for as nice as it was to not feel so alone, it didn't change how I'd been feeling all day long: I wished I could have spent the night at Wonderland with Vash, and that she would have simply wanted me there. I haven't heard from her at all since Friday, and am not expecting to until tomorrow.

5:25pm

Spent most of today at Rimma's place as she packed for her upcoming move. At the Marsh now, killing time before picking up Ennui. Vash pinged me a little while on gmail. She thanked me for the letters, and that was pretty much that. I guess if there's anything to be said, it'll be tomorrow in person, assuming that happens.

Tonight's Bad Movie Night got a decent writeup on sfweekly.com:

Bad Bruce
By Michael Leaverton
Things are looking rotten at the Dark Room, with Bad Movie Night screening the grammatically fearless Die Hard 2: Die Harder, a Bruce Willis sequel with one of the best let's-wrap-this-fucker titles in movie history. There are plenty of reasons to recommend it: The film is set on Christmas Eve, Bruce still has hair, and the bad guy, Colonel Stuart, practices karate naked. The plot is simple: Willis must stop Colonel Stuart, and in doing so he runs around a lot and says, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker," which he also said in the first Die Hard film and in the third one and in the fourth one and at home in the shower a lot, we suspect. Die Harder kicks off a special run of bad movies in January, with Sunday screenings of Spider-Man 3, Snakes on Plane, Transformers, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Look at you! You didn't even know those were bad! Hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Maura Sipila, and Mikl-Em kick off Die Hard 2: Die Harder.

Something's gotta give, but it won't be giving just yet.

Rimma and I had dinner at Nippon Sushi in Pacifica, then went to the Power Exchange. We got there around half past nine, sat on the red couch in the Cage for a few hours, then played a couple games of pool upstairs before splitting around a quater to three. It was a slow night, but she seemed to like it, and certainly appreciated the fact that it's a place to go to play free pool, not to mention the potential for sex and all.

I got to bed at half past three, put in earplugs, and turned up the Buddha Machine, and awoke again at half past nine. For me, sleeping six hours is an eternity. Earplugs never really worked for me before, but I have to give them a try again. There's also generally helpful for when I'm just doing stuff around the house. You know, in my own home. There's something terribly, terribly wrong about that. Nothing is right, in any direction.

3:12pm

I wish I was at Wonderland, working quietly and keeping to myself and not being in the way, but present and in the presence. i wish i was beside her, but i'm not there, i'm gone.

Yet another office holiday gathering is imminent: pizza in the kitchen. Even beyond the loathsome mandatory social aspect, it doesn't sound good at all. I haven't had much of an appetite lately. If I was exercising, I could easily drop a few sizes.

3:46pm

We got off work early, and now I'm at Mission Creek Cafe, at the table just inside the front door next to the big window. There were some available in the back room where it's warmer, but I like this one best. I like watching the world go by as I work.

Hanging out with Rimma tonight, and possibly Ennui on Sunday. Don't know about tomorrow. I guess I'll find out when it gets here.

Why do I still write, why do I still call?
Why do I still think there's hope for us at all?
These are the things I hate,
But they're the things I do
To get over you

Sunsets make me cry, old pictures make me grin
But I don't really care to see your face again
These are the things I say, but they're so hard to do
Like gettin' over you

You gotta believe that there's a reason
That we surrender up our hearts
But there's a vantage point
And it takes some time to find
Where you can see how all the pieces fit
As you watch 'em fall apart

Now I don't think it's right,
And you don't know what's wrong
My heart keeps asking me
Just where do we belong?
It's not as though my life ain't hard enough to do
Try gettin' over you

You gotta believe that there's a reason
That we surrender up our hearts
But there's a vantage point
And it takes some time to find
Where you can see how all the pieces fit
As you watch 'em fall apart

Now other people say,
"Stop living in the past"
But when there's nothin' left,
It's your memory that lasts
Now it's later than we think
But still this isn't through,
This gettin' over you...

Stephen Bruton,
"Getting Over You"

After finishing the second entry yesterday morning, I wrote Vash a physical letter, coredumping, letting her know exactly how I was feeling, with the honesty that comes from unedited pen and paper. I then spent most of the morning and early afternoon working on the apartment. They were home and awake and running and jumping and banging, so I put in earplugs, and then wore my big Princess Leia headphones over those, with my mp3 player tucked into the waistband of my tights. It mostly worked, though I felt like I was wearing a hazmat suit in my own home. But I refuse to let their early return derail my plans, and the Black Light District is looking really great. (I've mentioned that Black Light District is a Coil reference, yes?) The desk is clean, there's room for all my clothes in both the dresser and the closet, and I vacuumed in places which probably haven't been vacuumed since The Ex and I moved in back in '95, if even that recently. In addition to ostensibly making me happier, my apartment being clean and non-chaotic will be a very good thing if my landlord makes good on his promise to install soundproofing. He'll come and in see the place looking better than it has in years, and he'll realize what a swell tenant I am and that something's got to give and the people upstairs are more trouble than they're worth, and...

Jezebel and I had been texting each other for a while, and when I mentioned how rough the night before had been, she suggested we hang out. It sounded really nice, and I picked her up from her work at a quarter to four. Our first stop was at the post office to put the letter to Vash in the mail (I'd made a photocopy of it earlier, because it's still my writing, however personal or slapdash or emo it may be), and then to the Community Thrift Store to drop off several bags of books and clothes harvested from my apartment. Purge, purge, purge. We then went into Good Vibrations, conveniently located a couple doors down from Community Thrift, to look for the just-published More Five Minute Erotica. The store founded by the book's editor should carry it, yes? Nope. It was on backorder. Alas. After flipping several coins, Jezebel and I ended up going to Axum Cafe. We were both in the mood for food we could eat with our fingers, and had heard good things about the place. I was extremely underwhelmed, and found myself wishing we'd gone with my original plan of the Nippon Sushi in Pacifica. Still, it was quiet and uncrowded, which came in handy when I filled in Jezebel about the last few months, not to mention the difficulties last year before her and I met. (Most of which is the first act of the book I'm writing, Exchange and Descent. Meeting Jezebel kicks off the second act.) She was very supportive and sensitive, holding my hand across the table as I occasionally sobbed, my eyes more or less hidden from the few other patrons by artfully hanging squid tentacles.

Jezebel had gotten even less sleep than I had the night before (but for better reasons), so we went back to her place. She read a few chapters of the manuscript, mostly the stuff pertaining to her, pointing out punctuation errors or facts I'd forgotten, but not objecting to the content or how she's portrayed. She's always been nonchalant about being in my writing, and even if I was saying bad things about her or even making stuff up, I suspect she wouldn't mind too much so long as it made her seem hot. And as she pointed out, it's my story. I'm happy to have her back in my life as a friend. Healing hands of time and all.

I left her place around nine and went in search of the book. The Borders site informed me that both the San Francisco Centre and Union Square locations carried it, so I headed in that direction. As I was getting out of Phoebe on Howard between 4th and 5th, a panhandler approached. I (politely) waved him off as he started hitting me up, and as I walked away, he said damn, you're tall! which do you play for, the lakers or the knicks? And friends still wonder why I refuse to wear heels.

Though their in-house system said it was in, the Borders in the San Francisco Centre did not have the book. It looked like it had been recently removed, so maybe someone actually bought it. Imagine that! As I walked back to Phoebe I heard an unpleasantly familiar voice at 4th and Mission: hey! i know you! stop! i know you! I didn't have to look to know it was Cur. In fact, I made a point of not looking because I knew it was Cur. Making eye contact with her is best avoided, especially these days. I didn't like her when she was relatively lucid (and insisting on referring to me and Jezebel and every other tranny at the Power Exchange as "men"), and I like her even less in her current druggy spiral. Thank you, drive through.

The Borders in Union Square had several copies of the book. I sat down on one of the stools and opened it up to the table of contents. Yep, there was my name and the name of the story. I still get a little charge out of that, especially the first time I'm holding the book. I read my story, which I haven't really looked at since I submitted it to Carol. I saw a few things I wished I'd caught before—some clunky phrasing here, a weak word choice there, and too many adverbs—but otherwise, I was happy with it. Erotica is still not a strong suit of mine: Karen moaned considerably louder when Robert inserted his forefinger and index fingers into her pussy. As he began to lick her clit... It feels like I'm working in another language entirely, one which I'm vaguely familiar with but don't speak fluently. Like, I know enough to ask for directions to the restroom, but nobody's going to mistake me for a native anytime soon. Still, it's a nice little story, it's a product of where I was when I wrote it (what with the cameo by the giraffe upstairs), and hey, it's me in a book, further evidence that I'm that thing known as a "published writer," which I've wanted to be for most of my life. And now I'm making it happen. So why am I not happy? Why should relationship issues get in the way?

The cafe in the Borders was open until eleven, and there was a Starbucks around the corner which went until midnight, but I decided to try my luck with the twenty-four hour Starbucks in Laurel Heights. I figured that since it was the off-season I might have a snowball's chance in hell of getting table (college students don't have homework the week of xmas, do they?), and I was right. With a power outlet and everything. I was there until about half past midnight, making electronic edits to Exchange and Descent, the first time I've done so since October.

It occurs to me that I probably won't get to major work on the book about 1999, Landing on Water, until 2009. That seems about right.

8:07pm

I wrote Vash another letter this morning. I expect she'll get it on Friday. I intend to keep writing them until I run out of things to say.

At the Sea Biscuit, remarkably non-crowded for a rainy night. I tried to work at home, since my desk is shiny and clean now, but even with headphones on I couldn't drown out the sound of the giraffe. The thing is, where I'm at right now there are people talking at the counter and music is playing, and yet I find that far less distracting than the sound from above my home. One feels like a violation, and the other feels like a natural environment.

Talked at Vash on the phone for a bit, mostly me crying about her not wanting to see me until Monday. She didn't have anything to say in response other than suggesting that maybe I could come over for a little while on Saturday. That I was having the conversation sitting in a car in the rain was either too corny for words, or perfectly melodramatic. Possibly both.

11:39pm

About half the pages of my essay "The Slimming Effect" from It's So You can be read via Google Book Search. What I find especially neat about it is, it's the first evidence I've been able to find online that I'm actually in the book. I haven't been referenced in any of the reviews I've read of the book thus far (which also means I haven't been slammed, at least), nor am I mentioned in the book's Amazon page or publisher's site. It's not that I think that anyone who's heard or read me talking about the book thought I was fibbing about being in it—I have no reason to believe anyone pays enough attention to what I say to be skeptical, because, really, why waste the energy on something so meaningless?—but still, it's nice to have proof right there, currently on the second page of Google search results. I fully admit to Googling myself on a regular basis. It's narcissistic, but I'm narcissistic, so there you go.

I also see the YouTube clip from Transforming Communities is towards the top of the first page. Confession: clearing my throat and saying excuse me at six seconds in was an ill-considered joke which I'd debated doing. I decided to go for it at the last moment. It was a shout-out to Lynn Breedlove (not that Lynnee was there), since a regular joke in his solo show was that he likes to say "eschew" because people say "god bless you" in response. So I tried to...yeah. It didn't work, not at all, and there it is in the first ten seconds of the clip. Oh well. It's always something. (When Gilda Radner's book It's Always Something came out, my mother commented that it's a great philosophy. I agreed then, and I agree now.)

I do like that at this moment the "Related Videos" column includes quite a lot of tranny pr0n, including the hot if somewhat vaguely titled travesti2 (I love the word "travesti" so much, I wish it was used in America) and the considerably more descriptive T-Girl NastyLARA lies down on her latex bed. I couldn't be more proud.

sometime after midnight

Most cries for help go unanswered.

It was not the first time I'd cried that day. I did it a lot. I did it that morning after she left, and later on the phone when we were processing about the fact that she bailed on me on xmas morning (always a tough day for me, and moreso since last xmas when I felt emotionally abandoned) and talked again that evening when we got home from xmas dinner at her friend's place. We're back together, but I don't know what it means. I want us to go see The Nice Lady together.

The alarm went off at half past four in the morning, and she got up to go to work. I tried to sleep but couldn't, so I stayed up and worked on the apartment, conscious of the fact that before long the noise would start again, that my vacation was over, that they couldn't even give me that extra week of peace. I finally tried again around six and managed to sleep for a couple of hours, after first crying some. I don't expect I'm through with that for the day. I'm in a bad place.

8:42am

A couple days ago, I felt like there was hope. We were doing good, and I was going to get another week of quiet at home. And now the hope is gone.

Sunday morning we walked to the Sea Biscuit for breakfast. yay! They had the eggy stuff! I continued cleaning the apartment while Vash researched upcoming art shows and submitted her work to a few. We left at half past four to go The Hot Tubs. As we were getting out of Phoebe, at least two sets of people driving by in cars shouted stuff. As near as we could tell, the first one was woooooo! and the second one was hot tubs! I don't get this town sometimes. Anyway, it was my first time there since getting the squid, and putting it under my shower cap worked just fine. From there we walked to Miller's Deli for the traditional pre-xmas eve Jewish feast. I had a brisket reuben, which was quite delicious, as was the pickled green tomato. I especially appreciated the lack of xmas much. We returned to the Black Light District, watched a few more episodes of The Office, then went to bed. For possibly the first time since The Ex and I moved in back in '95, I had the curtains open all night long, the light of the full moon shining inside my room. It was quite nice. It helped that I didn't have to worry about the awful children from upstairs going into the backyard in the morning.

Vash had to work on Monday morning, xmas eve, so I drove her to her office. Once back home I resumed my housecleaning until half past noon, then went back out to her office to take her to lunch. (Her suggestion, which I agreed with immediately.) I returned home and worked some more. We also chatted over gmail a bit, me despairing over how horribly out of shape I am. Vash suggested we go for a walk on Tuesday, and that she could also show me the various stretches she's been doing lately. I agreed. (We had also talked some about going to a movie on xmas, or just hiding out at Wonderland, though the current frontrunner was dinner with a friend of hers.) My landlord also wrote to tell me that the neighbors would be gone until January 2, a week longer than I'd expected. It felt like a stay of execution, and gave me a bit more breathing room on the cleaning project. I wanted to get it done before they returned, during the brief window in which I felt comfortable and relaxed in my own home, without their constant stomping and banging and crashing. I picked Vash up from her office at half past seven, and from there we went to Sadie's for Wigilia, a traditional Polish xmas eve dinner. It was really nice, and we got to hang out with Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence for a bit. Robert asked me how my book is coming along, and I was flattered that he'd remembered. After that, Vash and I returned to my place, where we squeezed in one more episode of The Office (she's almost done with the second season) before going to bed.

This morning, xmas morning, Vash told me she needed some time alone. She left as soon as she got out of bed.

Pictures from the party last Saturday have finally started to circulate. I've discovered that the trollish pigfucker who asked if I was Ennui's husband and then insisted that I was a guy named Andre (even after I told him I was a girl and showed him my license) was a guest of the straight boys who sit nearby. Of course, they think he's just the coolest guy ever since has tattoos on his head and puts stuff in his mouth. Typical.

My mother has confirmed the story about her and my uncle getting their Bob Marley on during the first Reagan Administration.

8:53pm

I'm spending this last quiet Friday night at home continuing with the housecleaning, focusing on the closet. Going through boxes, purging, consoldiating, and so on. I just came across a lot of my cubicle directions from Autodesk in '98 spanning through late '00 at CNET, or whenever it was I got moved into my own office. A lot of it's taking me back, reminding me a lot of where I was in those days, and I'm becoming more certain that my next book is going to be about '99. It's a story I want to tell )and right now if I was shooting it as a movie the set decorations would be authentic). My intention is to keep it focused between January and December of that year, when everything changed for me, usually faster than I could keep up with.

Which means the postcard I found would be out of the scope of the book. It's from June 6, 2000, the day I saw Lou Reed in Berkeley. It was also the first time I'd seen The Ex since the previous December. After talking to her for a little while in the lobby and mostly managing to not break into tears (I was emo before the word was invented, don't'cha know), I wrote this on back ot the card:

A profound dislocation like I haven't felt since back then. There's me, there's the world, and neither of us want anything to do with each other. Okay, not true: I want back in. It feels like I need to start from scratch.

The Ex is glowing. There's no question that she's very content, if not plain ol' happy. I'm finding I must look away, lest I start to cry. I want her to hold me and tell me it's okay, that this isn't punishment for what I did, for destroying her life, since in the long run she got a better one. But sometimes, when I need to think of a friendly face, hers comes to mind. Because there's still a bond between us. It doesn't mean we we're fated to be togethre, not since I dealt fate that death blow. But all I see in her now is happiness; there's none of the rot or decay that used to fill my vision. I realize now that it was inside me. She is bad. She is imperfect. But no more or less so than me.

I didn't ask her, did I? Perhaps I shouldn't.

IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN.

I am on the verge of becoming an emotional train wreck on a level that will put last year to shame.

This is why I'm so nice to her; we both deserve nothing less.

I seem to recall that despite my best efforts to hide the card, Maddy found and read the card. She didn't explode like I'd expected her to, like she had the week before when I told her I was going to see The Ex at the show. Rather, she said she was sad that she didn't come to mind when I thought of a friendly face. It made me sad, too.