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Friday, 31 December 1999 (in my time of dying) 12:08pm I woke up this morning feeling the way most people probably will tomorrow: disoriented and with an aching head. Not from revelry, natch, but from this cold/flu/whatever, which is holding on fast. I'm still planning on going to Dana and Costanza's tonight for the event tonight. It's as far from my home as I dare to get. Not because I fear the Y2K (there, I said it) bug or the end of the world or even rioting, but I really fucking hate traffic. Can't stand it. When Summer and I were in the Haight the other day, we ran into a couple regulars from Shrine. (Goths may hate hippies, but damn if the Haight isn't crawling with them.) They asked me if I was going to Fernando's New Year's party, and I told them I wasn't, partially because I hadn't heard about it and partially because I don't want to travel much that night. They acted like I'd said I was afraid that Jesus would strike me dead if I left the house. "Oh, it'll be fine, BART is running, Oakland is perfectly safe." My objections to dealing with the large crowds was met with near contempt. Ohwellwhatevernevermind. On the plus side, I'm using my own computer at home for the first time in three weeks, thanks to my guru Costanza. It's running Windows 98 at 640x480 with many drivers not installed, but it allows me to get online, at least. One thing at a time. Now I just need to figure out why the video drivers, which worked fine and dandy under Windows 95, aren't under 98.
Looking back on this year, what immediately comes to mind is of the risks
I took, the big gambles. Specifically on January 16, 1999, when The Ex
and I broke up. Or, more accurately, when I broke up with her.
(Dissenting view: a year ago today, December 31, 1998, The Ex and I were
discussing the benefits of the new job at CNET I'd be starting
the following week. Although we were still together, she said she wasn't
sure she wanted to go on my insurance since she wasn't certain she wanted
to make a six-month commitment like that. So even though I was the one
who cut the cord two weeks later, she saw it coming.) Now, as I type,
Madeline is on the couch cuddling with Mina. Although it may not have
seemed so at the time, it's safe to say the gamble paid off better than
I could have ever hoped...
When it happens amongst a group (in this case, about a half dozen Elitist Fucks and a couple entouragers at Dana's house), this sort of thing has a tendency to result in the unmarried couples to ask themselves why THEY haven't gotten hitched yet. It was nice to see that Madeline has very much the same attitude about marriage as I do: it's swell for other people, and their wedding is already being greatly anticipated, but it's not something either of us want or need to do. She's already been down that road once, and I've never wanted to. Indeed, that was a point of contention between The Ex and I from the early days, that she always wanted to get married and I never did. I was rather content just to be together, not seeing what difference the piece of paper and ring on the finger meant. Granted, for most people it's not even those symbols so much as it's the ceremony and pageantry and pomp and fucking circumstance. Aaaargh. No. No no no, please don't make me. Most likely my distaste for the concept of the wedding ceremony stemmed from my (perhaps unfair) association of marriage with divorce. My parents got divorced, their friends got divorced, my friends' parents got divorced, and perhaps most tellingly I went to Tom's wedding and then watched his marriage deteriorate from almost day one, in spite of having two children like the good little xtians they were. And as it was happening, I couldn't help thinking that on top of everything else (the jealousy and pain of love gone bad, as Tom wrote), it must have been humiliating to have the memory of their wedding in so many people's minds. Hell, maybe (if I may get even more auto-therapeutic than usual) it's related to why I don't handle praise very well: it makes your potential/eventual failure that much harder. The wedding says yes, this is it, this is the person, this is the one that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, so I'm going to make this big huge elaborate spectacle proclaiming it to god and fuckin' everyone, and the divorce says whoops. never mind. At least in the case of praise, it's coming from an outside source. In a wedding, it was ostensibly your idea to begin with. I know that not all marriages end in divorce. I believe that Dana and Costanza are going to stay together forever. They've both been through enough in their lives and have come together at the right time, when they need each other the most. They love each other, there's no question of that. The Ex and I loved each other, too, but we came together when we very young, and at least one if not both of us still had a lot to learn about ourselves. Even if I hadn't transitioned, I believe we still would have broken up for simply having grown apart. We were perfect for each other at the time, but not by eight and a half years later. We couldn't have been. Tom and the mother of his children, I've always suspected, got married at least partially because the fundie xtianity they embraced at the time (1982) required it in order to do normal human things like sex. (Is there any worse reason to get married just to have sex and/or make babies?) Maybe they even loved each other, too. At first. But it's hard to tell whether or not you can really be comfortably physically intimate with someone when you can't get close to them until after you've gotten married. Whatever the reason, they marriage dissolved four years later, and his daughters call someone else "daddy." And I know darn good and well that Dana and Costanza are quite compatible. So, from my observation, nothing about getting married seemed to make a bit of difference as to whether or not the couple stayed together or how they felt about one another, so how could not getting married make a difference? Do two people who don't get married, by definition, love each other less than two people who do? I just don't see it. Never have. And yeah, I know, according to the fucking Bible marriage and procreation is the only true expression of love between Man and his Wife. The fucking Bible says a lot of things, and a great deal of it is total horseshit. This is not to suggest that I'm down on marriage on the whole; it's obviously what Dana and Costanza want to do, and I couldn't be happier for them. Indeed, this is probably the first wedding I've ever actually found myself looking forward to. I just have no desire to do it myself—what's right for me is not what's right for everyone else, and I would never suggest otherwise, being someone born with a male body who is nonetheless developing breasts— and am very grateful that Maddy doesn't take it to mean I feel any less about her. I am filled with gratitude towards her for many things. I/we survived New Year's Eve 1999. I did it surrounded by some of my very best friends, the people that I love (thank you, Dana, you may not realize how much it means to me) and the grrl with whom I am deeply in love, none of whom I even knew existed at this time last year. I couldn't have even begun to guess where I would be or who I would be with now, or that it would be so very different. But it was the best of all possible situations. I spent the first part of this year not sure if I belonged anywhere at all, and ended it knowing that I was exactly where I should be. All is well, although not everything is perfect. When is it? The world resumes its course, business as usual and full speed ahead, on Monday if not later this morning (as I write it's 8:14am on January 1 2000, which you must admit still qualifies as "sometime after midnight"), as if none of the preceeding revelry happened. The world didn't end, planes didn't fall out of the sky, there wasn't even the level of unrest in the streets I was somewhat paranoically expecting. (Lee? Buddy? My pied piper of eyeliner? You still out there? Bolinas still a part of the union?) We'll continue on about our business, waiting with a slight cringe of anticipation for the hype to build about NYE 2000, which us math geeks have been fond of pointing out as being—ahem—the REAL turn of the millennium. Don't let's get caught up in details, though. Time for bed now. As we all know, it's not really tomorrow until you've slept for at least a little while, so I guess it's technically still 1999 for me. Gonna guzzle some generic nyquil (classic green fuckin' death flavor, naturally) both to battle the flu which hasn't quite lost its grip on me and to get my share of the night's alcohol consumption which will surely result in the rest of the population sleeping until well into the afternoon. May as well join them. Or Maddy, anyway, which is all I really want. Happy New Year, y'all. Peace.
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Thursday, 30 December 1999 (see that my grave is kept clean) 6:46pm If I have any regrets about missing work today, it's not getting to see the further reinforcemnts for the Y2K celebrations tomorrow. My office is on The Embarcadero, which is likely to be filled with zillions of people tomorrow, and as such a gate was constructed around the building yesterday. The first floor glass fronts of the buildings in the Evil Levi Plaza across the street were also being boarded up, just in case. I would have liked to have seen this today and taken pictures, but alas...
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6:14am I left work early yesterday, not too long after Summer and I got back from the Haight. The only project I'd been working on seemed to launch successfully, no last-minute changes were coming in, and I was itching to get home to Madeline. So I quietly bailed, figuring that if something did come up, Leigh or (the other) Madeleine could handle it. Barring that, they could email my sfgoth account or call me at home. Not a word. When I came in this morning, I expected to find my mailbox full, culminating in a message from Leigh saying she'd taken care of everything, and at least one person getting rather upset that I wasn't here when I was supposed to be. Nothing at all.
I may or may not last the day.
Ever just want to shut out the world entirely? I'm growing increasinly disenchanted with the concept of "other people," Maddy being the notable exception. Fuck 'em. I don't need them and they don't need me.
The Fidget Queen was gone for most of the morning, but he's here now, blabbing into
the phone and whining and smacking his lips like a little priss as always. And the big guy's huffing and wheezing
away, business as usual. The rest of the fucking office is deserted, but of
course they're here.
It's part of the reason why I'm not sure I can handle another family function with my
brother's girlfriend present; the way she openly demeans and emotionally abuses him in front
of his family is quite sickening, and more than a little reminiscent of how Maddy's Ex used
to treat her. (Around other people, at least.) Yeah, an argument could be made that he could
just leave her, that it's his fault as much as hers, but I don't buy it and it sure as hell
doesn't excuse her behavior. More importantly,
I don't want to be a part of it, to suggest my tacit approval by sitting back and letting it
happen. If blood is thicker than water I guess I'd rarther drink water
than see my blood getting pissed in.
To prove it, I'm going home.
Maybe it's the flu that's going around. Maybe not. I'm just kinda pissed that it would have to happen on December 29, 1999. That just seems wrong somehow. And calling (well, writing) in sick to work is going to seem even wronger, but I don't see where I have a choice...
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Tuesday, 28 December 1999 (turn you inside-out) 8:27am I returned home last night to find the apartment cleaner than it's been in years, the washing machine functioning again and Madeline having bonded in a big way with the landlords. In addition to getting along with them personally (no surprise, they're nice people and she's extremely friendly), Maddy's obvious desire to keep the apartment tidy is the rental equivalent of removing a thorn from their paw.
Got the pictures from this weekend. Ick.
It's *not* stuck, it just won't let you switch aspect ratios while a movie is playing - you have to stop or remove the disc for it to allow you to change the aspect ration setting under "video" in the setup menu...
I am so embarassed.
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Monday, 27 December 1999 (signs of the times) 7:47am ...it's just that I don't want to be held accountable for things I didn't do. I've done enough bad things in my life, and I'll accept responsibility for them, but all too often it seems I'm being accused of things which I may not have done, but they certainly seem like something I would have done, and that's all it seems to take... 9:20am The big guy's back. He was gone last week, not for the holidays, but for a death in the family (about which I'd gotten to hear all the excruciating details in the weeks leading up to it). He's most definitely returned, and from the sounds of it, his health hasn't improved any. The gurgling is just as wet and phlegmmy as ever.
As if she didn't meet enough people over xmas (my mother, two brothers and three SO's including the unwelcome return of one
sociopathic hellbeast), Maddy gets to meet the landlords this morning as they trudge in with a plumber to theoretically fix the
clog which has rendered the washing machine useless since before Imani arrived. Not quite the way we'd had in mind, but
it'll have to do.
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Sunday, 26 December 1999 (these corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet) 8:55am It's just not worth it anymore. It simply isn't.
I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't choose this destiny,
I didn't request that my head be filled with this bad wiring,
I am doing what I must do to survive, and I have my limits, there
are certain situations which I simply cannot allow myself to be
put into anymore, and what the fuck, if that makes me a villain
in the eyes of my mother then so be it, so fucking be it, my
sanity is the ultimate goal here, not the quixotic task of making
my mother happy, sorry mom, you were lied to, you thought that if
you got married and started squeezing out the puppies like a good
little converted Catholic girl then you'd have a happy life like
you were promised, but it doesn't work that way, it didn't back
then and it isn't going to start now, and I'm not sure how much
longer I can handle dancing around her fragile sensibilities,
they can go on without me, they can pretend
I'm dead for all the difference it makes—
Oh, the pain...
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Saturday, 25 December 1999 (star me kitten) 3:01pm I'm ready to go home now. Please? sometime after midnight I am so fucking sick of holidays and the ritual family gatherings and the whole goddamn shooting match I can barely express it. It's a worthless exercise in endurance and teeth-grinding and pretending that you enjoy being in the presence of people who make you want to scream and kill. Fuck it all. I don't ever want to set foot in Fresno again for the rest of my unnatural life, though I know better than to think I could be that lucky.
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Friday, 24 December 1999 (no comfort or joy) 10:52am So my mother called last night to check up on us, to make sure we were able to get a motel, that we're definitely coming at all, etc. Very sweet. Oh, and by the way, she has a new "friend," the complete opposite of her last boyfriend (the sub-mongoloid Stan), so she would really really appreciate it if my brothers and I would please make a point of including him in the conversation. Because, of course, we have a tendency when we get together to talk to one another, and it seems Stan always felt very left out of the conversations (perhaps becuase there wasn't much opportunity for the "guns and sluts with big tits" angle), so she wants us to include her new friend. Out of curiousity, after I got off the phone with her, I called my brother Jonco to see if she'd also given him the same talking-to. She had, which surprised me. Thanksgiving of last year, she'd pulled me aside to chew me out for "not including Stan in the conversation," but didn't say a word to anyone else. Apparently I was the worst offender, no doubt because I was the one with the worst hair—her distaste for my semi-new bangs was still palpable. Presently, she didn't say whether or not she'd told him anything about me, and I didn't ask. It doesn't really matter, though I wouldn't have been too surprised if she'd asked me to dress down a little, or at least not wear the icky black lipstick. Wouldn't have been the first time, since for over ten years now there's been some metaphoric black lipstick she's objected to. I suspect I still haven't quite forgiven her for whatever xmas it was that she (begged, pleaded, insisted) that I tie my hair back—this was years before I came out, so it was simply long and brown, no bangs— before my nieces arrived, lest their mother's redneck hick okie piece of shit packers fan of a boyfriend get hot under the collar of his cowboy hat at the sight of a godless hippie pinko faggot such as myself. Now, I just don't care anymore. I really don't. Protecting the delicate sensibilities of small-minded "that sorta thing just ain't right and goes against the will of GAWD and wittle bay-bee jeeezus" types is completely fucking irrelevant. Granted, I'm not getting made up until we actually get to the motel in Fresno, but that's largely because I know better than to try to use the restroom in the Gilroy Denny's in full warpaint. At my mother's house, though, I'm going to be myself, period. If anyone objects to it, well, I suppose I don't need to return.
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Thursday, 23 December 1999 (voice of harold) 11:58am Man on the Moon was brilliant, and is certain to be Jim Carrey's first genuine financial flop. (Even The Cable Guy turned a profit.) There's just no way that the Dumb and Dumber crowd is going to like this movie. Madeline's interview with Trevor apparently went very well. Her relationship with me and the tranny angle—which, arguably, has no reason to come up at all—came up very naturally, and probably helped to an extent, since Trevor would obviously lean towards someone who is going to be comfortable around him, as Maddy obviously would be. Which is not so much the case with the next person in the chain of command Maddy has to be interviewed by, someone who apparently does not care for those of the transgendered persuasion. I've had dealings with this person myself, mostly regarding Outlook, and while I knew they were a schmuck I hadn't realized they were a bigot as well. I've had it pretty easy in the time that I've been here (my gawd, it'll be a year come January 4), so I guess it was bound to happen eventually. To be safe, Trevor instructed Madeline not to mention me at all in the next interview. Maddy also picked up on the fact that Trevor clearly likes Summer. A LOT. But that's not hard to see. They also bonded over the inevitable ritual of meeting the family, which Maddy will engage in tomorrow...
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Wednesday, 22 December 1999 (for no one) 9:31am We saw the tail-end of the over-hyped astronomical non-event this morning, one of the advantages of living a minute's walk from the ocean. The timing couldn't have been better, as Madeline had never seen the moon (or sun) going down behind the horizon, and it's a fascinating sight. 4:29pm Thanks to Summer, Madeline has an interview tomorrow morning with Trevor. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is such a weird fucking world.
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Tuesday, 21 December 1999 (disturbance) 4:33pm and you told yourself you'd never feel that way again, but at least you have her there
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