Last night was Twilight Zone rehearsal at The Dark Room, and we're there again tonight and tomorrow. Opening night is Friday. It's coming together nicely, though I have to do some emergency thrifting before tonight's rehearsal so I can find a half-slip which isn't black or red, since it's kinda jarring with the whites and beiges the rest of the cast are wearing. Pick pick.

The art show Vash has been working on for the past month opens tonight. Though I won't be able to attend because of rehearsal, we'll be getting together beforehand, and she'll be returning with me to the Black Light District tonight.

We left the NakedSword GayVN Afterparty around two. We returned to the Black Light Distrct and slept probably longer than we should have, only getting out of bed due to an act of will on Vash's part, since she still had a lot of work to do. As did I, but her ethic was stronger than mine. We hit the Sea Biscuit, and then she dropped me off at my car, which I'd parked behind the LGBT Center the day before. My plan (as always) was to find a wifi cafe to plug in my laptop and write, but not immediately. I needed to replace my CD of Mechanical Animals, so my first stop was Streetlight near 16th and Market. They didn't have it, but the Radio Shack a few doors down had wireless routers on sale for at a substantial discount, and I've been wanting one so I can easily transfer stuff between my laptop and desktop at home, so I impulse-bought one. From there I went into the Haight, finding parking quite easily for a Sunday, and trekked into Amoeba.

A used copy of the disc in hand, I headed to Thinker's Cafe, where I was lucky enough to find the fabled tablemitoutlet. Worked (well, downloaded and futzed around with various encoders to figure out how to rip CDs to flac) until they closed at six, relocated to the Starbucks at Bryant and Mariposa, wrote until a quarter past seven, then headed to The Dark Room for Bad Movie Night. I wasn't hosting, but it's always fun, and what the hell else am I going to do on a Sunday evening? Be at home, with the persistent rumbling and screaming upstairs? Not damn likely. They'd quieted down by the time I got home at half past ten, and I was up until nearly two in the morning trying to get the router to work. My laptop read it, said it was Excellently connected to the SSID in question, but...nothing. Couldn't actually get anywhere. Ironically, this is totally up Jezebel's alley, the kind of thing she could probably troubleshoot in five seconds flat. Alas.

That night at home, I find a whole 'nother bottle of spironactalone, the anti-testosterone pills I take twice daily. This is no small relief, since for as much as I don't like the idea of running out of the estrogoo, running out the testosterone blocker is much, much worse. I know from experience that the relatively small amounts my body must be producing by now still fucks with my head. To be blatantly seditious and risk offending my betters, testosterone is awful stuff, and I don't want it in my body.

I called the Westlake Walgreens the next day. I get bounced around from person to person—you know that thing where someone puts you on hold to allegedly check on something, and a few minutes later someone else entirely picks up the phone and you have to start from scratch? more than once—and the refrain is always the same: nope, we didn't get that order. we don't know what you're talking about. die in a fire. That was the gist, anyway.

I was downstairs in front of my office, just about the only place I feel comfortable talking on the phone around there. I exclaimed fuck! and kicked the building. I'm pretty good at keep frustration at bay (I have to be, I have no choice), but sometimes it barges its way in anyway. To hell with it. I frackin' give up. I have enough spiro to last me for the next month, and based on everything I've heard and read about the new doctor, it seems unlikely that he'll fight me on my current regimen. I should be able to walk out of his office that same day with a new estrogoo prescription. And if I don't...well, I just will.

The NakedSword GayVN Afterparty was pretty fun. My boss spoke remarkably highly of me when introducing me to people, calling me a hard worker and such. Okay, he was schnookered, but still, I'm holding him to it.

3:20pm

but, do you need me anymore? feel free to lie.

6:17pm

Standing in line at the Starbucks at Bryant and Mariposa. When I make it to the front of the line, the clerk lifts what look like a couple of travel mugs and ask if they're mine. I shake my head, and a guy standing a few feet away nods in my direction and says: it's okay, he was first.

Or was it she? I swear I heard it as he, the phonemes which start each pronoun are really quite different, and I heard that very clearly male-identified bioboy refer to me, towering above heaven and earth in my shiny black pants and long sweater and hair up in the three-day-old pigtails mit anemone and my eye makeup still organically fucked up from a crying jag this morning, as "he", because for the information that he had to work with from behind and not even hearing my voice, that's how I read. And yet I pretend it matters about the hormones?

Vash returned to Wonderland after the show. I went into the Mission for what was probably an unnecessary late-night-energy burrito, then to Divas, sneaking in under the "girls free before 11pm" wire. Y'know, if places like this exist for us, if getting in free to certain seedy bars and sex clubs is our birthright, we might as well use it. I didn't stay too long, though; indeed, I spent most of the time debating just how late I wanted to be out. Ideally I would have stayed until closing in hopes of hooking up with Kelly Michaels, Violet and Gina again, but I was well aware that Saturday was going to a be a late night what with the NakedSword GayVN Afterparty and all, and if I didn't get at least five hours of sleep my energy level would be all off. And I didn't have anywhere to be this morning, but between the sun coming in through my window and the fucking no-neck monsters stomping and screaming directly overhead, I knew I couldn't reasonably expect to get much sleep after nine or ten in the morning. So, staying out until half past five simply was not an option.

In addition to not having a lot of time—I reckoned I should aim for being in bed by two— I was feeling lonely. I needed to be around friends, familiar faces, so around midnight I drove to the Power Exchange. Driving down Van Ness toward Market, I marveled at the ginormous COLT banners outside the Herbst (I think), where the big COLT Studio 40th Anniversary shindig was taking place. I'd heard some talk about it around the office, though our main focus was understandably our own party on Saturday night. Damn, though. Gotta love a city which is so open and acknowledging of men-fucking-men pr0n. (Or, to use COLT's own purple prose, "traditional masculine imagery." To which I can only reply: Brad Patton? Are you kidding me?) It's not a huge shock, necessarily, since the major gay pr0n studios are smack dab in the middle of Pride Sunday, but for such a classy joint as the Herbst to host it still strikes me as pretty remarkable. It's among the reasons why I want to get Kelly to perform on the Trans Pride Stage, and if not her, then do at least some acknowledgement of the tranny pr0n business. Damnit, if they can do it, if they can be open and celebratory of it, why can't we? Why do we have to remain, if not necessarily asexual, then at least like the dirty secret nobody likes to talk about, the last of the perverse-in-a-bad-way sex?

I got the usual questions at the Power Exchange about Jezebel, and I told them that her and I aren't seeing each other anymore. I wasn't sure if I was in the mood to play or not—I really was primarily there for the company—but when Hal started flogging me tentatively as I danced to a new mix CD (a rather gothy affair starting with Manson's "The Dope Show"), I told him to have at me. Much to my surprise, he said there weren't any marks on my back. Sure felt like Eva left a few on Wednesday night at Bondage A Go Go. What she didn't leave on my back was made up for by the marks she put on my inner thighs (in SDS Nebula region, still not sure how I feel about that), and the rope burn on my right arm isn't going away too soon.

Made it home by two, and in bed by half past. I don't feel groggy today, so I guess it worked.

6:13pm

in a culture which worships butchness, what is it like to be lumped into that category despite your best efforts?

Speaking of things which make me happy, Vash and I had dinner last night, the first time we've seen each other since Valentine's Day, and she'll be coming to the Queer Open Mic tonight. She's going straight home afterward, but still. Tomorrow, she's joining me for the NakedSword GayVN Afterparty. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a Paris Hilton sighting.

My character is barefoot for most of the play, both for verisimilitude (it's a very hot planet) and because I'm a head taller than the rest of the cast. It becomes especially obvious in my intimate lovers-quarrel scene with Meliza, who's wearing slightly lifty sandals so she doesn't have to crane her neck quite as much to look in my eyes. Unfortunately, The Dark Room is not an especially warm place, and the stage was freezing last night. I was also barefoot for Zippy, but that was in the summer. (With all due respect to Mark Twain, a cold snap in March in San Francisco is still colder than July.) Anyway, I wore socks last night, but I don't know if that's going to be an option for the run of the play. I doubt it.

After about five minutes, my feet do what they do when they're cold: they started cramping up. My left foot, anyhow. Hurt like hell, but die leistung muß weitergehen and all that, I used it for the character as best as I could.

When rehearsal was over, Jim, Alexia and I popped in the Spy Kids 3-D disc. We've been promoting it as being in actual 3-d for Bad Movie Night, and this was the first time we tested it with the glasses, which I bought in bulk. We only watched a few minutes, but it looked damn good. Yay showmanship!

3:06pm

Hot frackin' damn. I have an appointment with an endocrinologist who knows their shit on Tuesday, March 27. That's the earliest they could see me, of course, and the timing is cutting it especially close, since my sixth injection is supposed to be on Wednesday, March 28. Unfortunately, my current supply will run out with my fifth injection March 14, so here's to hoping for a quick prescription turnaround.

8:27pm

Feh! Ignoring for the moment that before this year I haven't been since 1999, this is the night traditionally make a point of avoiding Bondage a Go Go: The Annual Bettie Page Lookalike Contest. Ouch. If I wasn't meeting Eva there, I'd continue my policy of distance. Oh well. I haven't been using my ego much lately anyhow. Besides, aside from the bangs, my hair will be blonde and up in pigtails, so it should be obvious I'm not even attempting to participate. Good thing it isn't a Debbie Harry lookalike context, though Vash is convinced I'd win one of those.

sometime after midnight

Got home from Bondage a Go Go around three, still wearing the tortoise shell ropework Eva did on me, which came after an hour of rather intense play. She did the tortoise shell last, and I wore it for the rest of the night, from half past midnight onward. I managed to untie it just now without having to cut it. Makes me very proud.

As Barefoot once astutely put it: ah, life. It's just so fucking weird. And me, personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.