My Face for the World to See (Part II): The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly a fiction January 1 - 10, 2000

You know how us Catholic girls can be We make up for so much time a little too late I never forgot it, confusing as it was No fun with no guilt feelings The sinners, the saviours, the loverless priests I'll see you next Sunday We all had our reasons to be there We all had a thing or two to learn We all needed something to cling to So we did I sang Alleluia in the choir Alleluia alleluia alleluia I confessed my darkest deeds to envious men My brothers never went blind for what they did But I may as well have In the name of the Father, the Skeptic and the Son I had one more stupid question We all had our reasons to be there We all had a thing or two to learn We all needed something to cling to So we did What I learned I rejected but I believe again I will suffer the consequence of this inquisition If I jump in this fountain, will I be forgiven? We all had delusions in our head We all had our minds made up for us We had to believe in something So we did Alanis Morissette, "Forgiven" Monday, 10 January 2000 (three angels) 7:31am He didn't replace the Anne Geddes babyporn calendar. Hooray for small fucking miracles. 8:44am Spilt yogurt, particularly around the crotch area, looks a lot like a come stain. I'd forgotten about that. Whoops. 9:25am Madeline and I became official six months ago today. 11:39am Maddy's in that awkward phase of job hunting, when offers intersect. She'll be hearing back either today or tomorrow about the job here (hopefully today), and the placement agency has some positions they want to talk to her about. A frustrating poisition to be in, but ultimately a good one. It's certainly better than having no prospects, and she's more than ready to start working again... 1:20pm My legs hurt. I think it's because I'm not using them enough. Entropy is setting in. the concrete broke your fall... 3:54pm It's been brewing since last week, but it would seem the Mongolian Death Flu has nailed Maddy head-on. If she's gonna have to get it (and isn't everybody?), it might as well be right now, rather than in a week or two when she starts working. The downside being that we probably won't be going out for our six-month anniversary like we'd intended. The plan was to catch Orson Welles' The Trial at the Castro, and then to Sparky's, both to satisfy her french fry jones and to commemorate the first place we went together. It was our first stop after I picked her up from the airport, having been in each other's physical presence for less than an hour. (Strictly speaking that took place in September, not July, but the millennium doesn't begin until 2001, either. So bite me.) In any event, a night together at home sounds nice, too. Six months...only or already, I'm not sure which. And we've only been living together (or in the same time zone, for that matter) for just over a month. It feels both perfectly natural and a little incongruous, at the same time. This is how it's always been, the two of us, and yet there's that other past, that other history, which will never quite go away either...I guess it's a good thing that my brain is accustomed to this kind of dual-engine perception...really, it would have to be, or I wouldn't have survived this long. Last | Top | Next

Sunday, 9 January 2000 ((placeholder)) 2:32pm Talked to Howard on the phone this morning for the first time in months, and Maddy and I might be joining him for The X-Files tonight. I haven't even seem him since at least April; all I remember for sure about the last time is that I was considering going to Roderick's after I left his place, but I don't think I actually did. Sara and I had also almost gone to his place before heading to Bolinas later that month, but that didn't happen, either. In any event, it'll be nice to start hanging out with him again, a previously regular event that dried up quickly when I broke up with The Ex. And if Maddy thinks I'm a film geek, well, she ain't seen nothing yet. I'd left a couple messages on his machine a while back when I was having some problems getting the DVD player working properly (the issues have since been resolved); he commented today that when he first heard them, he wasn't entirely sure it was me. Seems my voice, to him, is changing subtly. Not an obvious affectation like a lisp or a rise in pitch, which I would categorically NOT do, but a more natural progression, a more feminine tone. Interestingly, Vlad made a similar comment the other night at Shrine, although A) he said that I was developing "a drawl like an older female smoker," and B) he's vaguely insane. Still, it's nice to hear, because it's something that I've actually been very worried about lately. My damn voice. A extremely big giveaway... Last | Top | Next

Saturday, 8 January 2000 (sign on the window) 8:12pm if i can't save my soul i'll save my body if i can't save my soul i'll save my body if i can't save my soul i'll save my body Last | Top | Next

Friday, 7 January 2000 (if dogs run free) 9:41am i'm so sorry, my dear...i didn't mean to hurt you...please forgive me... 2:49pm Madeline and I went to lunch with Laurel and thieves today. Laurel and I both expressed our desire to go to Roderick's again, neither of us having been for several months. Not that we ever went together, mind you. Oh, she saw me at Roderick's, when she was reading my journal but hadn't yet met introduced herself, but kept her distance. Didn't feel right coming up to me purely on the basis of reading my journal, so she let me mope in peace. I've teased her about it, but of course I'm not at all upset. Rather, as she was describing seeing me there for the first time, the description was punctuated by twisting her fingers in her hair to represent my then-omnipresent pigtails—a gesture, for some reason, I found almost heartbreaking. In truth, I know the reason well enough, or enough to know that it's not a complete mystery, just an abstract concept that defies all logic and reason. It's this bizarre sort of nostalgia I'm feeling for what was a very, very ugly period in my life. Ugly emotionally, at least, because I can't shake this absurd feeling that...it's hard to describe, except that it's very shallow. And has something to do with the twenty-odd pounds I've gained since then. A crisis of self-image, or something. i was so much prettier then. what the hell happened? Must see Phil. Soon. Zap zap zap. Must start working out again. Shed shed shed. 8:12pm Turns out that after next Friday, Shrine is moving to Saturdays. It shouldn't matter at all. And yet, of course, it does. Being a little experimental tonight. Red 'n' black stripeys underneath fishnets—either I've never seen it done before, or I've seen it done and really liked it but forgot until now. Probably the latter; the odds of me coming up with something original in terms of clothes (goth clothes, no less) are awfully slim. Speaking of slim, I'm wearing the the slimmer skirt with the slit that I very seldom wear because of how it leaves little to the imagination regarding my religion. (Put another way, my dick creates a noticeable bulge. If you're a new reader who didn't understand what the reference to transsexuality in the disclaimer meant, I have a dick.) But Laurel described me as wearing it, so I feel compelled to wear it. I have my hair up in pigtails, too, but that's for Maddy's benefit. And my own, I suppose. That weird nostalgic, the absurd sense of yearning for a painfully recent past (not to mention a painful recent past). I'm happy the way things are now. I claimed to be happy then, and in a weird way I was, but now it's genuine. I wouldn't change a thing about my life at the moment or the events of the last year, because somehow all the right events occured to result in Maddy joining me. And yet...what the fuck is it? It's not The Ex. Madeline and I still at odds to an extent over my continued quasi-friendship with her, though we have very little contact. That much is too much, though. Truly losing her as a friend (which in order to stick would perhaps have to be in the form of a genuine, I-never-want-to-speak-to-you-again falling out, something that never happened and which I'd always hoped to avoid) is a very scary thought to me, but one which I must perhaps learn to accept as inevitable. If so, hey, you know, life goes on. A small price to pay. In any event, that's not what's getting to me right now. Dance. I wanna dance tonight. I haven't danced in quite some time. Probably I'll just end up with my ass planted in a booth like always, which is okay too, but I wanna dance...for a while it was my only exercise, and then I stopped doing it, and... There's a part of me that's thinking about getting up early tomorrow—early, real early, super fuckin' early—and going to the gym. Forcing myself back onto the track, as it were. A part of me, anyway. A part which has failed to gather the sufficient will in the recent past, and will no doubt continue to fail. sometime after midnight ...then again, maybe it won't. When I crash in a little while I'll most likely sleep until the sun peeks through the Mina-chewed foil on the windows and starts searing my eyes (which is to say, roughly four hours) and then not get up and go to the gym since it'll surely be crawling with people, including that type most reviled by the regulars and revered by the managers, The New Years Resolutioner. Without the income from them, gyms wouldn't be nearly as successful a business as they are. Anyway, maybe I'll go tomorrow and maybe I won't (I just spent all night clubbing, for fuck's sake, even if it was spent almost exclusively at a booth), but I now have that missing element: motivation. I am now motivated to get into shape, and for a far better reason than simply hating the way I look now. Self-loathing never seems to be quite enough, because wallowing and indulging (not to mention indulging in wallowing) provides that all-important instant gratification, and you need a real goal to get past that. Lord knows I speak from experience. My motivation? I'm gonna be a model. Magenta is organizing a fashion show, and was at Shrine tonight, clipboard in one hand and measuring tape in the other. She took my measurements and had me fill out a brief form, stuff like my height, weight, skin tone, etc. Preliminary stuff which will be given to whatever designer I end up working with. According to Magenta, the show will have a goth overtone almost by default, but will hopefully move beyond it into more experimental realms. After all, goth's been done, for at least 15 years now. In my case, though, it'll probably be slightly more traditional stuff. Which is more than fine by me. Maddy could get to see me in a corset sooner than we'd expected. Magenta is very enthusiastic about it (no doubt in part because she'll need as many people as she can get, and my presence will certainly add variety), and Maddy seems to be as well. In fact, Magenta asked her to participate as well, but she declined, not being quite as comfortable with this sort of exhibitionism as I am. For one thing, I've done this sort of thing before; I was in a hair show for Miguel in early '98. He colored my hair black with red chunks, and so it remained (though fading rapidly) until I went all black in March, the day after Mary died. Anyway, I thought it went fairly well, though Miguel hasn't asked me to do one again, and I know he's done shows since. That probably doesn't mean anything. Then there's the simple fact that my life has been a goddamned show for the last year. There's this journal, the different picture for each month (almost all of which are a pose of some sort), and having the nerve to leave the house in makeup barely a notch or two below "clown." For starters. What's more...I'm going to let you in on a little secret. At one point or another, every tranny has wanted to model. Period. I don't care how much of short-haired jeans-wearing "I don't wear makeup because that would make me a slave to the phallocentric male-dominated power structure" superproud fiery butchy transdyke they are, at one point or another they've looked at a Vogue or Harper's Bazaar some other symbol of Ultimate Penis-Worshipping Evil and sighed. Just a little. Anyway, I couldn't say no, however uncomfortable I may be with my body right now. The show itself is in May, so I have five months to, hopefully, shed 20 lbs or so. Last time I hit 180, I couldn't go any lower. Maybe I'll have better luck this time. Hell, even if the thing was tomorrow, I'd still have said yes. And now I have a genuine reason to get back on track, a goal to shoot for. Vanity? Yes, of course it is, and perhaps the worst kind for the worst reason. Hey, if Courtney Love could get a nose job... There's no absolute guarantee at the moment that it'll happen for me, of course. There's a selection process, and not everyone who starts out is chosen in the end. But damnit, I'm in the running, and that's what matters right now. the ex didn't attend the hair show. her parents were in town, and they had other plans. on thanksgiving morning, i mentioned to my mom that in spite of how much she was pining for the ex and wanted to keep in touch, nobody in the ex's family had ever bothered to contact me. as far as they were concerned, i no longer existed. "well," she replied, "can you blame them?" later that same day, she was pushing pflag literature on jim and roxanne, insisting they join. i'm not entirely certain why any of this came to mind. Last | Top | Next

Thursday, 6 January 2000 (winterlude) 10:38am Yesterday ended up being fairly constructive by my standards. Between no work coming in and sfgoth being down I was going slighly nuts, so I left work early and did some shopping, including a new keyboard for my computer at home (no more "macro" key, whatever the fuck that was) and a new discman. Finally, I can drive along without Fables of the Reconstruction randomly skipping every few seconds. This will make me a very happy person, as Maddy will attest. Better yet, I can walk/run with it. Meaning I can exercise. Meaning one of the major obstacles to me working out again on a regular basis is overcome. Now for the whole laziness/newfound love of sleep thing... 11:25am I wrote Lee, asking him to come to Shrine tomorrow. I'm not expecting to hear back from him, but it was worth a shot. 2:28pm Who would have thought that life in this post-apocalyptic world would be such a crushing bore? Then again, '99 was busy enough. Maybe it's just as well if '00 takes it easy. 3:19pm It occurs to me, when I was in Bolinas last August, Lee and I talked about me taking over administration of the net.goth journal ring, such as it is. (The main thing I'm itching to do is remove the dead links, like the journal between mine and Dana's.) If I do hear from him, I'll have to bring it up again... 3:42pm Maddy had her first encounter with the California Department of Motor Vehicles today. Fear. Last | Top | Next

Wednesday, 5 January 2000 (blackout) 9:09pm sfgoth was down for most of the day. Oh well. These things happen. Last | Top | Next

Tuesday, 4 January 2000 (went to see the gypsy) 11:37am I started at CNET a year ago today. Wow. Guess this means my stock options should be kicking in pretty soon. Really oughta look into that, since there's probably paperwork I need to do or something like that. I'm very bad about these things, and I'd hate to not collect on whatever I might be able to collect on just because I didn't jump through whatever hoops were necessary. I'm not quite as nuts about stocks as everyone else here—whenever the stock goes up or down a micron (it's measured in microns, right?), it's all anyone can talk about—but I suppose I'd better start taking more of an interest in it. If my timing is right, I can get my student loans paid off in one fell swoop... 1:39pm I haven't seen it yet, but Summer tells me she dyed her hair black. Okay, so I'm intrigued. 4:41pm Okay, it's all very simple. Fact: my stomach's been feeling a bit more prominent lately. Fact: rolldown, particularly with my velvets, has gotten to be more of a problem. Fact: I weighed in at 200 last night. As recently as May, I was holding steady at 180. Fact: my eating habits have been degrading over the last several months. (Damn, I love that taqueria on Taraval...) Fact: I've been exercising less and less. Indeed, I've been driving to work almost constantly over the last month, and my last trip to the gym was...a long time ago. Fact: the gym membership is still burning a $32/month hole in my pocket. Fact: that velvet dress I'm so fond of felt awfully tight when I put it on the other day...so I ended up wearing something else. Fact: something's gotta change. 7:27pm Mmmm...blood oranges...these little guys helped me through that night.... I really wanna go to Roderick's again. Tonight's no good—I'm not up for it, and Maddy is showing signs of getting what I've had this last week—but next week is very tempting. Or maybe Death Guild that Monday, which will just happen to be my six-month anniversary with Maddy. Got a lot of those happening right now, it seems. 10:18pm The damn beret has been located; it found its way into the wash on Saturday night, and evaded capture when the laundry was checked between the washing machine and dryer. Until now. It's a little more snug of a fit now, but ultimately in fine condition, and clean for the first time in two or three years. So this wasn't a bad thing at all. Last | Top | Next

Monday, 3 January 2000 (time passes slowly) 12:56pm Remarkably, I have today off for real. Probably it was the company's way of making up for requiring us to work on Friday, which of course I negated by not coming in on Thursday or Friday. Pyrrhic victory at best, since I've been sick the whole time and am still sick. Not as bad as on Thursday, but not entirely well, either. Mostly my nose and throat. In spite of all that, we're still leaving the house. Never can learn, it seems. 8:15pm My damn beret is missing. Again. It's very strange. I last saw it on Saturday, after a jaunt to Amoeba. (2001: A Space Odyssey and Tron on DVD. Oh yeah.) I took it off in the bedroom, and...it's gone. We've gone through every inch of the apartment, with the apparent exceptiong of the inches that contain the beret, since it's still missing. Oh well. At least I was able to get a new garter belt and some new fishnets, since my previous set were getting difficult to attach. And I'll be experimenting with the fishnets-as-armwear approach at work tomorrow. If I like it, I'll do it at Shrine on Friday. Going to Shrine this Friday (January 7) is very important to me, as it will be my one-year anniversary. It was January 8, 1999, when Summer and I first went to lunch together and got to know each other, culminating in her asking me if I wanted to join her and her friends in going to their usual Friday night club. In some ways, I'm still amazed I said yes, and a chill runs down my back when I consider what might have happened if I hadn't. Indeed, had The Ex not been out of town that night, I would have almost certainly said no, and...everything would be different now. The Ex and I would still be together now, possibly. Because while Summer and I are would have still become friends, I might not have grown quite so attached to her so quickly, I might not have then felt so motivated to break up with The Ex a mere week later—indeed, it was going to Shrine the following week with The Ex and seeing Summer there and remembering what she'd said in ICQ that week about being on the verge of breaking up with Krycek and how she'd often go out with more than one person at a time and not realizing that her and Lee were on the verge of coming together and somehow fooling myself into thinking that her and I had more than a snowball's chance in hell together—and might not have ever felt the courage to do so. And if I ever had, or if she had been the one to finally make the decision to cut the cord at a later date, I wouldn't have been able to stumble in the manner that I did, being in the right place at the right time (even though it felt like the absolute worst place at the absolute worst possible time, and I still believe that January 23, 1999 was the emotional low point of my life), in the manner that somehow results in Madeline standing in the kitchen right now eating a blood orange. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, saying yes to Summer that day was the most crucial action I've taken over the last year, however unwitting it might have been at the time. It's all about proper perspective, you see. Last | Top | Next

Sunday, 2 January 2000 (day of the locusts) 5:43pm I wonder if the millennials are going nuts right now. January 1, 2000 passed without noticeable incident. It had to: everyone was too hung over. When nobody wakes up until after six in the evening, the day is pretty much a goner. 7:21pm Dana and Costanza are getting married on Halloween. Damn, I love my friends so much... Last | Top | Next

Saturday, 1 January 2000 (new morning) 1:59pm If you're looking for some kind of year-end psuedo-summation, the last entry from yesterday would be your best bet. It occurs to me, though, that when I was younger, my plans for December 31, 1999 were very simple: I didn't want to be stuck working graveyard at Taco Bell. Considering that in addition to not being stuck making chalupas for drunken revelers I spent it with Maddy and got a number of comments on how good I looked (since, as has been observed, I'm a vain whore), I can't complain at all. It's nice to think that a few goals have been reached. Last | Top | Next