My Face for the World to See (Part II): The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly a fiction February 11 - 20, 2000

Sunday, 20 February 2000 (binky the doormat) 9:40am Christ, I'm not even close to being done. 11:54am Friday night was what Monday should have been. Both Maddy and I left work early (had there been a damn thing for me to do I would have stayed longer, but there wasn't so I didn't), met in the Muni station and were able to get home by 5pm. We weren't there long before we drove to Japantown. We bought tickets for the 7:50pm showing of Galaxy Quest, then went in search of the elusive concept known as "sushi for dinner." Of course, Japan is the right place to look. We ended up at an all-you-can-eat seafood 'n' sushi buffet. Arguably not the wisest thing to do on Day Four ("normally but sensibly"), but damnit, it looked really good, and for $16.95 per person you can't go wrong. Especially if both people are quite hungry. The only thing the place lacked was unagi, which Maddy lamented. To me, the fact that she was openly pining for barbecued eel proves she's officially arrived as a sushi lover. I'm too proud for words. Last | Top | Next

Saturday, 19 February 2000 (pilgrimage) 9:11am Yum. Vicodin. 10:01pm Yeah, I know all day long it said "2/10" at the top. Look, I'd already hit the viodin, okay? I don't even know how many I took today. Before we'd even arrived, I think I'd already downed three, and then another two at the first break. The break which didn't occur until after a solid two and a half hours. Made it all the way through Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong, the Left disc of nine inch nails' The Fragile and up to track 7 of The Cure's Disintegration. The Fragile was a bit of a risk, since heavy guitars and agonized screaming are not typically conducive to pain management, but it's been in heavy rotation in my discman lately (I have a certain emotional attachment to it, as the songs "We're In This Together" and the "The Fragile" itself bring to mind my relationship with Maddy) so I figured it was worth a shot. From there it was disc one of Wilco's Being There, R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People, The Cranberries' Bury the Hatchet and Lisa Germano's Happiness. Put another way, the session lasted six hours. Got damn near everything, the operative words being "damn near." At roughly the six hour mark, Phil put down his implements of torture, turned off his light and announced he was tired. I didn't object, since I'd spent much of the last two hours wishing it would be over, not to mention I was grateful that he was devoting as much time to me as he was. (A paid devotion, but a devotion nonetheless.) Unlike last time when he was a tad distracted, I was able to use ice to lessen the swelling, and his generous use of iodine to promote healing left me with a neat orange glow to the lower half of my face thus accomplishing the seemingly impossible task of increasing my freak level. The amount of odd looks I got for the next few hours confirmed this. (I kept wishing someone would have the guts to ask me why my face looked like that so I could tell them I'd been at sea and had contracted scurvy. No such luck.) I briefly considered making up the top half of my face with the violet foundation to get that Mansonesque two-color effect, but decided against it. Maybe next time I'll have him do my entire face, not just the part that got zapped, so at least it looks like I've heard of "blending." The next time will be in two weeks. Then again two weeks after that. Then in another two weeks. Eventually I'll grow old and die. 10:55pm He stuck his pencil behind his ear, laid his sketchbook on the ground in front of him. He let the fingers of his right hand slide down the soft inner skin of his left forearm. The skin there was mottled with old scars, years of slashes and cross-hatchings done with a single-edged Exacto razor blade, the same kind he used for layouts. Perhaps a hundred thin raised lines of skin, paler than the rest of his arm, exquisitely sensitive; some still reddened and hurt once in a while, as if the tissue deep inside his arm had never quite helaed. But if you went deep enough into the tissue, no scar ever healed completely. —Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood Last | Top | Next

Friday, 18 February 2000 (the way out is through) 6:22am my greatest fear is hurting those closest to me because of how i am. and them turning away. fear is just an inabilitiy to accept the inevitable. 9:13am 190. Now, to behave. 11:10am Brian's been gone all week. He wrote on Monday to tell me that he'd be out for the first few days, but now I'm getting worried. He's made it clear to me on more than a few occasions over the preceding months that he's growing increasingly dissatisfied with his job, and I can picture him bailing given a decent chance. Or at least the option of a job somewhere else. I don't doubt that I could do his job; in a lot of ways I have been doing just that this week. I'm not saying I want to see him go, because I genuinely like him and would miss him, but if I was given the opportunity to take over his position, I'd take it. (Because he has an actual office, and the only office in the department without a window? Possibly.) Somehow, I doubt I'd be offered it. Three-day weekend coming up. I used to be afraid of them. 1:01pm This is why I'm glad I live in San Francisco. 1:46pm Scruffy. In a state of scruffiness. To be possessed of a certain degree of scruff. That's pretty much where I'm at right now. And it's most noticeable, as it always is and always will be, on the upper lip. 10am appointment with Phil tomorrow morning. Scheduled for four hours. This is the easy stuff. Maybe this will be the time... Oh, yeah, right. Sure. That'll really fucking happen. 2:40pm it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to it didn't turn out quite the way you wanted it, did it? Last | Top | Next

Thursday, 17 February 2000 (dark water) 6:59am Morning people aren't evil. Cursed, perhaps, but not evil. Really, we're just misunderstood. 9:51am It's the classic urban nightmare: the lights went out on the subway this morning. Just as the train was leaving West Portal, heading to Forest Hill. A fairly short stretch (not like the one between Forest Hill and Castro), and there was light coming in from the tunnel and the passing trains; it was just the one we were on. The lights came back on when we got to Forest Hill. Still, though, it was eerie as hell, and it's hard for the active imagination not to consider the possibilities. What if the train stops? What if someone is claustrophobic, or afraid of the dark? Or if someone is simply not a very nice person, and given the opportunities of a dark train car underneath a mountain... Except for the sound of a few feathers ruffling, nobody said a word. The level of detachment commuters can achieve never ceases to amaze me. For the most part, I think we know the risks we're taking. The ones who are resigned to standing both ways every day certainly have my admiration, since I couldn't handle that. Among the reasons that I don't want to move is, I'm too happy living close to the terminal stop of some lines, meaning I can almost always get a seat. If I lived closer to the middle of the city, I'd go nuts. Haven't driven to work since last week. I think I'm off that habit for the time being. Good. Getting a lot of reading done, at least; I'm alternating between Maddy's copy of Drawing Blood and Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion, which Maddy thoughtfully got me for Valentine's Day. My present to her, a Bride of Chucky doll which she's coveted for quite some time, should be arriving in the mail soon. (I'll never forgive myself for not getting a Tragedy Ann at the Hot Topic in Topeka when I had the chance.) I won the eBay bid. Ironically, Pac Bell just made their DSL setup considerably less expensive. Bastards. 1:22pm Yeah, that's right. I joined another one. Don't ask me why. 2:44pm Sheesh. Apparently, the actual losers are the ones who try to be clever and screw it up. Kinda like what Zappa called "a suicide chump." 3:55pm Everything goes away. Including what you thought might have been home. sometime after midnight —no—please—help me, i need—and it's so far, it's so dark, i'm so lost Last | Top | Next

Wednesday, 16 February 2000 (bury the hatchet) 10:01am Rain. Possible thunderstorms this afternoon. Yay. The words "holding pattern" keep going through my mind. I have no idea why. 11:50am A very long time ago. Again with the nostalgia for a youth I didn't enjoy. 3:18pm So help me, I'm bidding for a new modem on eBay. I'm not proud of this, but it seems like as good an idea as any. I managed to get my wenet dialup working properly, after discovering their fine print on NT which had escaped my notice until that point. Still, the my current modem was originally being used on The Ex's Mac and must be at least three or four years old, so an upgrade can't be a bad thing. And it should help me continue to talk myself out of DSL. Whatever it takes to behave and not get myself into further trouble. Some days, that almost seems possible. 3:36pm Omigosh. I've just been invited to a birthday dinner for Sara tomorrow night. As much as I'd like to go—I haven't seen her in a while, and I'd love for Madeline to meet her—I simply can't. The timing's all wrong. Damnit. Funny how it always seems to work that way. Last | Top | Next

Tuesday, 15 February 2000 (windout) 9:38am Day One, again. 1:52pm So we left the apartment with Red Lobster in mind as a destination. Very white trash, but of course we're very white trash. I'd called ahead and was told there was a half hour wait and no reservations. Ick. By the time we got there the wait had increased to 60-65 minutes. Um, no. There are other places in the world to get big fruity drink (although a random linguistic shift had us now pronouncing it "froofy"), and with less children, although Maddy didn't feel up to dealing with a bar. Indeed, she was on the verge of a return to the cold that's been occasionally stalking and attacking us the way Mina terrorizes Oscar. We started driving without a real destination, just back towards the city (the closest Red Lobster is in Colma, and sometimes it bothers me that I'm aware of that fact), though I was trying to figure the best way to get to Japantown from our direction. If worse came to worse, it could be back to the original sushi plans. Although we knew damn good and well that everywhere we went would be crowded. Given the day and all. Which is why when we passed by a Chevy's, we stopped. Ports and storms, and Chevy's have that neat hack where if a table's free in the cantina, you can sit down even if there are people waiting for a regular table. We weren't the only people doing this, but still managed to get a table after waiting a comparatively short twenty minutes. (It took another twenty minutes to be served, but the poor waitress was clearly swamped.) The stare factor was not quite what I was anticipating, although every so often I broke out the compact and fixed my eyeliner. Just to be on the safe side. I found myself wishing I'd actually shaved and gotten made up before left, but alas. I suspect that next year we'll have learned our lesson: that the losers aren't necessarily those who go out on that night, but the ones who stay in. The dangers of attempting to be traditional. I hadn't shaved since Saturday night before Shrine since I was planning on letting it grow until next Saturday when I get zapped. I realized last night that I would go quite nuts if I did that, so I shaved this morning. That'll give Phil 96 hours of growth to work with, more than enough. I'm actually in that magic period right now, between the redness fading (which it has) and the shadow returning in force (which it hasn't). (Then again, has it?) (When I shaved and got made up this morning, doing so before work for the first time in over a month, when I was done all I could see was the shadow, the lower half of my face where it was more than plainly obvious that my skin is darker.) (In the intentionally dim light of my desk, my face in the mirror doesn't seem any darker than it should be...well, perhaps just almost like a smudging above the upper lip...) (Coincidentally, the publisher of Heliophobe just wrote back in response to my recent query to say that, yes, all three issues are still available.) (Cool.) Sadly, I won't be able to get much more out of it than I am right now, since this morning will be my last shave for a while. It never ceases to amaze me that some trannies actually go full-time before completing electro. Boggles my little mind, it does. Michael Stipe has said the reason why R.E.M. never published lyrics was so that people wouldn't pigeonhole what the song was about. He missed the point. It's not to determine what the song is about, it's to sing along. Eels have a new album coming out. Lisa Germano recently played a gig on BBC Radio One with them, raising hopes for a second try at the Eels/Germano tour which got cancelled in '98, breaking my heart on many levels. Beets and green beans for dinner tonight. As utterly disgusting as I find them, I'm not giving up. The diet seems to be working. Seems to be. Just for kicks, I weighed myself the other morning (Day Five, I guess), and my weight was around 193-5. Then it went back up. I know that weights can fluctuate, of course, and I'm trying to avoid weighing myself on a daily basis, since if nothing else it's not like I have the excuse of exercise equipment asking me. I had an endocrinologist appointment on Thursday, but now it has to be rescheduled because the doctor's suddenly gone out of town. Gives me a little more time to drop the weight back down so I don't have to go through the same damn routine with her again: she writes out the prescriptions for premarin, provera and vicodin. I remind her about the Meridia. She looks at me like I'd reminded her to write me a prescription for rusty nails. She points out that I've gained weight, not lost it, so how could I be on Meridia? I assure her that I am, and that I simply haven't been making it to the gym lately, but that I'm hoping to start going again on a regular basis real soon. That satisfies her, more or less, and she writes the Meridia prescription. It's not that I want to continue on the Meridia, really. It's pretty fucking expensive, usually around $125 a month. But I'm almost scared of what might happen if I go off of it. When she dropped my dosage from 10mg to 5mg I felt it, and now I'm up to 15mg. All things considered, it seems to work. I could sure use that $125 a month, though. And then would come the return of the bagel habit...and worse... Taking pills gets old. Well over a year, and I still have yet to come up with any kind of regular dosing schedule. Should be obvious, even to me: taking stuff twice a day? How about 9am and 9pm? Seems simple enough, and I'm almost always awake at those times, even on weekends. It would seem my sense of discipline is too shoddy to allow it, though. I'm never going to be completely through with the pills, though. Even after surgery (notice how it seems to have graduated from an "if" to a "when?"), there will still be my daily premarin. So be it. Foreverandeverworldwithoutendamen. Remind me to tell you what an "orchiectomy" is sometime. Great. A mouse has been spotted. This means I'll get to hear The Fidget Queen. Yeah, I've been known to "react" to mice, but...oh, never mind. 5:11pm Lee wrote. He doesn't live in Bolinas anymore. I really wish someone would tell me before I slip between dimensions. It's far less jarring. Last | Top | Next

Monday, 14 February 2000 (princes familiar) 9:38am Maddy and I somehow avoided most of the rain on the way to work this morning. I doubt we'll be as lucky tonight, and as it is our plans our still kinda up in the air. Sushi. That's about it. All the V- preparations came to naught, as [she] was still sick and in bed and miserable and [i] couldn't do a thing about it. just not fair. [she] felt bad about canceling our valentines day plans. *shakes head* Silly girl. [i] could care less about Hallmark day. It kills me, it really does. He had no idea. Oh well. Tomorrow was another day. So was the next. 3:01pm No reservations, no real idea where we're going. In an act of intestinal fortitude far greater than I could possibly manage, Maddy told me she's jonesing for a big fruity kind of drink, the sort that comes with a little umbrella. Guess that means no sushi. 3:33pm Wow—I just got confirmation from Yamaha's Tech Support, and am told a "specialist" will be contacting me shortly. Not getting my hopes up too much, though. Going. Last | Top | Next

Sunday, 13 February 2000 (someone to pull the trigger) 9:38am Sometimes, the way I dream reminds me of that wonderful scene in the underrated Top Secret!: if I were to wake up and find that in reality I'm being tortured by the German army, it would be a blessed relief. So waking up next to Madeline is of course more than I could hope for, as it always is, but unlike Val Kilmer's character, my actual surroundings don't necessarily make it any easier for me to shake off the unsettled feeling. Why can't I ever dream about pleasant stuff? Why is that so much to ask? And why does Fresno, particularly that area on Shaw by my father's condo, seem to keep cropping up? I suppose it's possible that it never actually has, and one of the lingering aftereffects of the dream is a sense of misleading deja vu which is simply making me think that it's a recurring element, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't seem familiar in a the dream context...I've been there before in another time in another dream... sfgoth is down. It's been down since last night, and probably won't be back up until Monday morning. Doesn't seem likely to be fixed on a Sunday. Oh well. It doesn't qualify as food, shelter or clothing, so I can't complain too much. I have no right to demand a reliable internet connection, be it dialup or server. 10:42am Back up. Whee. It's still raining outside. It was raining last night, too. There was a hip-hop show going on at the Maritime proper, but we arrived very early (around 9:30pm), before there was much activity outside. People who arrived later said it was absolute chaos on the street. Kinda made it feel like we were in a bunker, waiting for the apocalypse to come and go. Krycek was on hand-stamp duty, and seemed very perplexed by the fishnet on my arm and how it covered my wrist. After being reminded of a cat puzzling over its reflection in the mirror, I simply tore it open from the thumb down to the wrist so he could stamp it. Made sense at the time, anyway. It was a busy night for accessorization; one of the vendors was selling presumably handcrafted jewelry, and knowing that I've been wanting one, Madeline pointed out an absolutely lovely choker. So goff it gives you the bends, naturally, with a spiderweb pattern and a spider charm hanging from the middle. At the risk of sounding immodest (shaddup, you), it looks really damn good on me. And in a few of the picture Maddy took, my eyes may have even been open. No promises, though. On the way home, we stopped at one of the very few places one can find food in San Francisco at 3:30am: 7-11. One of the very few 7-11's, for that matter. (It kills me to say this, but the simple fact is, this city needs a 24-hour Taco Bell. There, I said it. I reckon the cyanide should be kicking in any minute now.) There were maybe a half dozen people in there, and they didn't spare us a second glance in spite of us being in what could already be considered last night's makeup. That weirded me out, if in a good way. Am I, like, actually passing, or could they just not possibly give less of a shit? Which would I prefer? I still don't trust Sundays. I may never. Bad things want to happen on Sundays. They're evil. Which reminds me, I still haven't seen Any Given Sunday. An Oliver Stone movie has been out for two months, and I haven't seen it yet. That's very wrong. 9:55pm Bah! Bah, I say! This is nothin'. Lemme tell ya, sonny, I lived through El Nino. This piddly shit don't compare. Although I wish it was enough of an excuse to not go to work tomorrow. Alas. Took down the braided pigtails. I miss them already. Last | Top | Next

Saturday, 12 February 2000 (commemoration) 4:53am I started this diary a year ago today, at Lee's suggestion. As always, the question comes around, and as always, I don't have an answer. what have i learned? 6:11pm That there's no act more destructive than opening my mouth. 7:24pm If you want to do it, do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. But don't make it into such a production. Don't feel you need to grace us with your presence if you feel so much more advanced. It simply isn't necessary. Some of us need to. Please allow us that much. 8:09pm Tonight, everyone is where they should be. More or less. sometime after midnight Oh, I needed that. I haven't been in full battle gear since Zaleska's visit, which was almost exactly a moon ago. That's just too damned long. Maybe this represents a flaw in my irony circuitry, but I dig Shrine unrepentantly. I do. Walking into the ladies' room and getting a "Long time no see" from Michelle as she wrestled her braids into submission was a very nice feeling. A sense of home. I guess I'm not quite so elitist just yet. The plan which is forming in my warped little brain is thus: alternating Saturdays between Phil's and Shrine. That is, I got zapped last Saturday, went out tonight, I'm scheduled to get zapped again next Saturday, I'll go to Shrine the following weekend, etc. I don't know if it'll happen or not, but it certainly sounds comforting. And not once while there did I think about things going on in other places. Because none of it mattered. As Orky would say, that universe can go on out without me. Last | Top | Next

Friday, 11 February 2000 (stumble) 9:34am Perfect circle? Not quite, but getting there... 10:12am Day Four, eating "normally (but sensibly)" until Day Seven. Fair enough. It was nice having a bowl of cereal this morning, or drinking orange juice. The little things. The diet coke (along with my usual semi-copious amounts of water) from the last few days just isn't the same. Gimme citrus over carbonation any time. Sometimes I think the biggest diappointment of Living In The World of Tomorrow (if 2000 isn't The World of Tomorrow, what the fuck is? this is it, folks!) is the food pill not having been developed. Screw flying cars and robotic butlers (my, that sounds painful), I want to be able to just pop a pill every morning and have that be it for the day, supplying the nutrients the body needs to be healthy. I don't think I'd miss eating, provided of course said pill results in not being hungry. I've never taken great pleasure in eating, not the same way that most people do. I could go the rest of my life without eating steak or chocolate again. All of which is why I would never make a good Satanist. While it appeals to me more than any other major religion because of the emphasis on rationality and personal responsiblity (as opposed to everything being "god's will" and going on blind faith in fairy tales), I can't quite get into the whole "indulgence instead of abstinence" thing. Not that I'm a proponent of abstinence per se, certainly not in the hypocritical xtian sense of "I pretend to do it so everyone else should do it too." If people wanna eat and fuck to their heart's content, more power to 'em. Sometimes I wish I was capable of that kind of hedonism. But I don't seem to be. Anyway, other than that—I don't mean to suggest that it's the end-all and be-all—Satanism makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. And you don't even have to believe in the supernatural. 12:33pm Ow. Wanna know the worst part of accidentally biting your lip? It happens again. And again. And again. Particularly if you chew gum. (I know, I know.) Because every time you do it, the wound grows larger, and harder to miss... 3:32pm Looks like it might be a late one here today. Considering that Brian only noticed for the first time yesterday that I've been leaving work early (and he wasn't at all upset, he merely asked that I let him know), I can't complain too much. Tomorrow morning, Miguel cuts and colors my hair, and barring unforeseen circumstances, Maddy and I are going to Shrine that night. Where, she informs me, I am dancing. So be it. 4:00pm i'd like to thank you all for nothing at all 4:50pm I really miss Lee. At this moment, I want to take Madeline to Bolinas and hide. Maybe smoke some of that potent Bolinas grass and just let the world take care of itself for a while. Let the sun go down without the lights coming up. Pretend the bad people don't exist. Remembering the past is not neglecting the present. Indeed, it may be the best way to prepare for the future. Otherwise, the pain was for naught. Last | Top | Next