In happier theatrical news, my Twilight Zone episode now has a complete cast. Three actual speaking roles (Maddy, Anamoly and Dav'id Stein) and one voiceover (Dr. Hal). Vash has even agreed to do some drawings, as the main character is an artist, and, well, so is she. This means my girlfriend will be be providing the artwork drawn by my ex-wife's character in a play I'm directing. That's the kind of weird confluence which only seems natural when you have a life like mine.

Speaking of said ex-wife, she's going to be reading in both the San Francisco in Exile showing I'm curating in June as well as the one Cindy's doing in March, though only for Cindy's show are Maddy's breasts prominently featured in the promotion. I'd like to think the ads for my show will be equally sexy, if in a considerably different way.

9:20pm

remember, doll, with me you come before any of them.

We're intending to make the most of the trip. It'll be an adventure, I'm sure, if not a downright whirlwind. I might even finally see Bronson Canyon.

8:51pm

The rain let up just long enough tonight to let me walk from the L stop to my apartment. Hooray for small miracles—or for dumb stupid luck, anyway. Humans often confuse the two, in their desperation to believe that the universe is not cold and random. The rain did not do so when I had to get from work to the public access station for a programming meeting, however, so I took a cab.

kittypr0n has a new time: first and third Saturdays, half past midnight. You know, right around the time that Saturday Night Live historically starts to suck ass. Not that I watch it anymore. I don't watch teevee. I download it, for as long as it lasts. Anyway, it'll be followed by The Tim & Roma! Show. That's a damn good hour of programming.

So I got out of bed last night at some point to piddle. Nothing unusual there. Vash was spending the night, which is also nothing unusual. She stays over about two or three nights a week on average. It's a pretty good balance for us. Anyway, she stirred when I got back into bed, as she often will. Opening her eyes long enough to acknowledge my presence (and probably smiling, that intoxicating smile which seems to come as natural as blinking, even when she's mostly asleep), she put her arm across my chest, and promptly fell back asleep, almost as promptly as when we went to bed in the first place. (Seriously. Her sleep habits resemble a kitten crash more than anything else.) Seemingly out of nowhere comes Perdita, who'd been in an especially affectionate mood that evening. Purring so loud it's a wonder she didn't wake Vash, she quickly settled in on my stomach just below Vash's arm. Both of them were fully in Deadweight Kitty mode, in which a cat manages to warp gravity and increase their weight (but not their mass or volume) by a factor of ten. The main problem with this was that I can't really sleep on my back. If I'd been on my side or laying on my stomach, sure. But my back, not so much. And I didn't want to disturb either of them...

10:58pm

It hasn't stopped hurting. Not yet. I want it to, but it isn't up to me.

The gig was the Queer Open Mic. I drank two glasses of wine throughout, but never really felt it. Both Cindy and I had been having really craptastic weeks, and though we maintained our grace while hosting, we weren't afraid to let the anger show, either. Like I said after the feature read (and she came up and thanked me for saying it), one should never apologize for catharsis. Like pleasure, you should get it every chance you can.

I'm still hurting from Thursday morning. I have completely withdrawn myself from the play, the part changed to a girl or not. The grapes are not sour, but they're no longer to my taste, either. Vash has been cast in the play, though not in the role which she read against me on Tuesday night. I guess that's ironic. I'm proud of her all the same.

The world kept pushing my fucking buttons yesterday. I actually got shushed at a department meeting, buy someone who has no fucking business shushing me or anyone. When I called him on it later (via email, since there was a good chance I would have lost my shit otherwise), he said that it hadn't been directed toward me in particular, but everyone at the table who was talking, and he'd spoken first. Of course, he specifically turned to me, and did not direct it to the rest of the table. Every time I think about it, I get a new surge of anger. My emotions are spiking a lot lately.

I also had the one-on-one about my future in the company and what I'd like to do. Turns out I'd misinterpreted the company email in which he asked for people to set up meeting with him; he wanted broader visions for the company overall, not our own personal ambitions. When I said that I'd like to do more work-related writing, the response was one notch away from patting me on the head and saying Awww! It's So Cute When You Pretend To Be A Grownup. I mentioned that I'd heard some scuttle regarding possibly launching themed blogs similar to Gay Porn Blog, and it was like the Russian scientists asking Dr. Floyd what was found on the Moon in 2001. Okay, sure, whatever. Can't say I didn't try.

Making things even more entertaining was suddenly having two new data entry monkeys dropped on my lap. Which is fine in and of itself, except that it was up to me to train them, and I wasn't expecting them to arrive until Monday afternoon. In fact, nobody but the new head of our department had known these new people were going to be starting today, as he'd neglected to inform anyone, including the project manager he'd recently hired to, well, manage projects. Minor detail, I suppose.

Tiny world time regarding said project manager: turns out her and I were both in the goth scene at the same time, around the turn of the century. In all likelihood we were in the same club at the same time at least once. This was revealed when I was telling Officer Dave about The Leader, not using his real name, and from across the office she guessed who I was talking about. Thankfully, she was not at all offended by the things I was saying about him; back in the day, whenever I spoke ill of him, people would usually go all seventies Body Snatchers, pointing and screeching. More than anything, she seemed glad to be past all the drama of those days. But there's always new drama, isn't there?

Yo estaba bien por un tiempo,
volviendo a sonreír.
Luego anoche te vi
tu mano me tocó
y el saludo de tu voz.
Y hablé muy bien de tu
sin saber que he estado
llorando por tu amor
llorando por tu amor
llorando por tu amor.
Luego de tu adiós sentí todo mi dolor.
Sola y llorando,
llorando
llorando
llorando
No es fácil de entender
que al verte otra vez
Yo seguiré llorando

Yo que pensé que te olvidé
pero es verdad es la verdad
que te quiero aún más,
mucho más que ayer.
Dime tú qué puedo hacer
no me quieres ya
y siempre estaré
llorando por tu amor
llorando por tu amor.
Tu amor se llevó
todo mi corazon
y quedo llorando
llorando
llorando
llorando
llorando
llorando por tu amor.

Joe Melson & Roy Orbison,
"Llorando"

Upon working out that it was a dream I realized that meant I could fly, or do whatever I wanted. I tried, but was unable to get more than a few feet off the ground at first. Figures. Everybody else gets to fly like a bird in their dreams, but I'm the frackin' Greatest American Heroine. When I did get the hang of it, the walls I had to fly over just got higher. My dreams do follow their own internal logic, I gotta give 'em that, even if it is Brazil logic.

I was the first at the office this morning at eight, and though the door was still locked, the alarm was blaring. I almost turned around and made the Starbucks run I'd talked myself out of a short while before, but decided that it would look bad if I walked away now. I let myself in, entered the code, and nothing. Kept on blaring. I called the company, and they told me how to make it shut up, but not exactly why it was going off, beyond a cryptic reference to an entry that morning at half past six. Uh-huh. The alarm had been going off for am hour and a half, but I guess the company didn't figure it was worth the trouble to alert the cops or anything. And yet, these people charge us a couple hundred bucks every time someone accidentally sets off the alarm. I'm impressed. That's a hell of a scam.

1:17pm

And then, about an hour ago, my computer display suddenly rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise. Not the physical monitor itself, obviously, but the image on the screen. Kinda made me wish I had a copy of Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon handy, but, well, I didn't. A tech whom I rightly or wrongly hold responsible for the fact that Charlotte's leaving the company next week fixed it, saying that my graphics card had gone screwy for some reason. Swell. Dumb stupid harbingers.

Charlotte and I left the office for a little bit. I told her about last night, how much it hurt to be offered a boy role without any sort of indication that the part might be altered to accommodate the minor detail and that I don't consider myself to be a boy and don't like putting myself into positions in which I might be parsed as male (especially given how often I'm getting called "sir" lately), and got teary all over again in the process, right there in Starbucks, adding unnecessary chocolate to my already sufficiently chocolatey mocha, no sunglasses in the bright day because I've yet to make an appointment with the Kaiser vision people, but feeling glad that I've grown out my bangs because in addition to giving me a more outwardly feminine appearance (or so I thought), it's nice to finally be able to cover my eyes with my hair, something I could never do with the Betty Page cut.

That was one of the reasons I wore my hair like that for so many years, especially early in my transition (note the difference between it and my hair in the above picture, though the makeup is almost exactly the same), because there was no way to hide my face or my eyes. I was right there, exposed, my face for the world to see. Y'know what? I've paid my fuckin' dues. I've earned the right to hide a little. And this is not me saying that all trannies should have that kind of hair. It was just my thing, and this is about me, not anyone else.

2:06pm

never tell an an obsure, occasionally controversial memoirist she shouldn't express herself.

May not have quite the same ring to it, but it's equally valid.

8:53pm

I am such a lousy druggie; I forgot that I have a couple valium, and man oh man, it would have come in handy at work today. I took a half after I got home, and as expected, it took a bit of the edge off. Not much, but there's a lot of edge, and it's a small pill. Though I have the means to get stoned, it would be a phenomenally bad idea. For that matter, I can't remember the last time I got stoned while at home by myself. I don't think it's happened since the breakup, and not too recently before that, either. I admire people who get happy when they're baked, who can use it to escape their troubles rather than being forced to deal with said troubles, which pot does to me. Then again, the net result of this is that I'm not a stoner (and thus not spending a lot of money on grass), and that's surely for the best. And if I lose any more memory cells, I'm going to have to start taking Polaroids and tattooing my arms.

Maddy and I had dinner tonight at Kiki's, the same place Vash and I went to on Tuesday. Not the first time I've gone there twice in a week, and besides, this time my teeth were feeling up to the challenge of some of the crunchier rolls. I have her some burned DVDs (including the original version of the Twilight Zone episode I'm directing and in which she's acting), and she gave me a tin of Penguin Mints and a gift card to Starbucks. I'll make good use of both. If "stimjunkie" hasn't entered the parlance of Galactica fans yet, it will soon enough.

i'm on a roll
this time
i feel my luck could change

I'm still not well emotionally. My eyes have felt...heavy all day long. Every time I blink, I'm aware of the moisture behind them, just waiting for an excuse. But all things pass eventually—not always satisfactorily, almost never painlessly—and this will too. It helps that the director and I have been corresponding. I explained exactly how my feelings were hurt, and he feels really bad for having done so, saying it was through misguidedness and haste, and not any sort of maliciousness. I believe him to be sincere, and it means a lot. Besides, it's so damn rare for someone to actually cop to screwing up. Lord knows I rarely ever do so. Cop to it, that is. I screw up more often than not.

As is usually the case when I'm depressed or unhappy, I dread going to sleep. Thankfully, I dread sleep deprivation even more. I also have a meeting with Tim tomorrow morning about my future in the company, so rest is all the more important. It'll be a good meeting, I think. They want me to start showing more initiative and ambition, huh? Okay. That's what I'm gonna do. I will start getting invited to the coke table at industry parties, damnit.

10:32pm

Something else about that old picture I linked to earlier: the Manson poster behind me, which I'd acquired in Santa Cruz a week before the picture was taken, is still on the living room wall. Indeed, it's the only item to have survived seven years of redecoration, only having been taken down long enough for me to put black bedsheets on the wall last year, then going right back up. Well, okay, the clock is the same. Then again, I'm pretty sure the clock never fell drastically out of fashion, nor was it ever stupidly blamed for school shootings. If it had, I'd like to think the goth community's response would not have been to distance itself from the clock and say tgat it isn't really goth, but rather, to argue against the very idea of blaming any household appliance and/or timekeeping device for the act of two very emotionally damaged kids, who were openly not fans of the clock to begin with.

Yeah, I am still bitter about that. Why do you ask? And let's ignore for the moment the utter foolishness the very concept of a goth community. It's right up there in absurdity with, oh, "punk community" or "knitting community," the confluence of which leads us to such brain-bruising concepts as subversive knitting. (I don't claim to understand the mind of the Republican, but I'd be willing to bet Perdita that "the subversive knitting community" is not too high on Karl Rove's enemies list.) Then again, this is the country that brought us Extreme Vanilla, so nothing surprises me anymore..

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some subversive masturbation to attend to. Masturbators Against Bush!

We actually got to play a scene against each other, which was an interesting experience. The director admitted that the scene in question was actually lifted from the original movie of Clue, a scene between the butler and Mrs. White which didn't make it into the play. Mrs. White, of course, is the part I originally auditioned for way back when. I've also thrown my hat into the ring as a possible replacement if the original actress is unavailable for the revival later this year, though I'm third or fourth in line. My hopes, needless to say, are not up. Anyway, I'd like to think that the director was testing Vash's chops as the Mrs. White, since every time we ran through the scene, I played the butler. (Can butlers be girls? I'm way too middle class to know these thing.) Yeesh. I guess I'll just never play Mrs. White, no matter the situation.

8:45pm

Ran into Suzanne Ramsey, aka Kitten on the Keys, on the train ride home today. She actually lives in my part of town, so it's a wonder we don't see each other more. Outer Sunset unite!

sometime after midnight

Wow. I can't remember the last time that I was so hurt and insulted that I cried, and it's not like there haven't been a few slings and arrows shot towards me in recent memory. (Of course, every single one of those was perfectly justified. I'm not suggesting that anybody has been unfair to me.) This is surely some sort of cosmic slash karmic payback for the people I've hurt over the past year.

What the fuck is it about me? Why am I getting clocked as male so much these days, and even being offered boy roles in plays? I've looked into it, and butlers are men. Quick, try to think of one female butler character. Nope, neither can I. Is it the top hat? Fine. I won't wear it anymore, not even at gigs where I'm also wearing a slip and fishnets and a zillion other indicators of my delusional state of female self-identification. Can't be too careful, huh?

Other than a dental appointment at noon, today has been all about the paperwork. Officer Dave sat me down and went through my performance review; unsuprisingly, the main point made was almost exactly the same as from my first review at CNET in seven years ago. Basically, I need to start showing more iniative, be more outspoken with ideas, that sort of thing. Otherwise, he's very happy with my work, and I scored high. Dunno if it'll translate into a raise or not. Kinda doubt it. He also told me to start actively looking for more webmonkey work in the company, both because it's my strength and because if I don't, I may well end up becoming a dedicated data entry monkey. Not only is it a waste of my abilities, it's going to be especially painful when I inevitably get to the boxes of straight movies which have been piling up around my desk. Interestingly, Tim told me the same thing earlier in the morning, that I need to be careful not to get roped into data entry full time. Ah, office politics.

5:17pm

But it's the still the best office I've worked in yet. We're currently promoting bi and tranny titles, and on the front page of the site are two of my favorites: the oft-mentioned Brazilian trannyfest Sexo and Fantasias, and Miss Dixie's Military Sex Parties. I've never seen the latter, but it has a really cute skinny girl on the cover, so it gets my vote.