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Monday, 31 January 2000 (wall of breath) 9:39am So close...almost...I think it was a save... 9:58am Blech. Meetings a-plenty today. One is a snorefest departmental meeting—the simple fact is that what I do and what the rest of the department does have almost no bearing on each other, and I don't do much more than sit in the same general area as them. The people that I most often work with directly, except for Brian and Leigh, are in other buidings or other states altogether. The irony being that I'm actually kinda fond of where I'm sitting, since there are no overhead lights and I have a considerable amount of freedom within in my own space. Transferring to another department would most likely mean entering the world of overhead flourescent lights and greatly reduced privacy. Yes, there's The Big Guy (who, in all fairness, is not a bad person and he actually seems to respect me) and The Fidget Queen (who, in all fairness, could drop off the face of the planet tomorrow and I would consider it no great loss), but skin is going to itch. That's just the way it works. The other, more scary one, is a conference call with people I've never met in person but have been working with on a project for which the company is simply a sponsor and I was pimped out to do the actual coding. Brian is going to be in on the call for muscle, but it's still such a weird thought, being involved in this sort of thing. By all rights, shouldn't I still be renting out videos or something? When did I become the kind of person around which conference calls are organized? Maddy and I went to the supermarket on Saturday. Not our favorite thing in the world, but it needed to be done, so the bullet was bit. I noticed a number of street punks in the store, particularly in line for the restroom. (Public restrooms are a rare and wonderful thing in San Francisco.) And if they were street punks, then we were clearly corporate goths. The only thing I definitely noticed in their cart was beer, and we had milk, orange juice, lettuce, rice, tuna... They were in the checkout line next to ours, and we passed through a group of their friends sitting out front as we wheeled our cart back to the car which I'm hoping to pay off when my stock options vest next month. Something about it simply didn't seem right.
We finally used the Macy's gift certificate we got from my mother for xmas yesterday.
There was never any doubt what it would be for: Diorific Plastic Shine in Alluring Black, which I've been coveting
ever since I saw Tania wearing it last May. Now, our parents taught us that it was polite to send thank-you
notes for presents, and in the case of money or gift ceritificates to tell them what you got. Considering that
my mother loathes black lipstick with a passion, I question the wisdom of telling her that I used the gift certificate
for what is probably the most intense black lipstick (lip gloss, to be precise) on the market. That's a toughie.
you and me, we're in this together nowIt's nice not to care sometimes. 1:50pm Survived the conference call. Fairly painless, all things considered; I got the impression that the people on the other end were actually extremely nervous. Probably has to do with CNET's reputation as a Borg-like force, a reputation which is not entirely undeserved but which I want no part of. Before the call, I cleaned my desk. It's been needing to be done for some time now. Productivity! The big meeting is in twenty minutes, and is supposed to last at least two hours, and from the looks of things will have almost no bearing whatsoever on anything I do. But god forbid I should miss it, since I must show the proper amount of departmental spirit. Penguin mints, lots of them. My notebook, in the hopes that inspiration will strike and I'll be able to keep myself occupied by writing. Hasn't happened in a very long time, but desperate times and all. Ideally, I'd read. (Okay, truly ideally I'd be able to stay at my desk, but pick pick.) Kinda like I used to in church. I'd be sent off to the "children's mass" for most of the first part of the service, and my books would fit nicely inside the hymnal thing. When I got too old and had to suffer through the fucking sermon, well, I was shit outta luck, since my mother wouldn't let me read. It's not as though anyone else genuinely wanted to be there, either; after about five minutes into the sermon, the fidgeting and overall boredom of the congregation was impossible to miss. The only difference was, I was there against my will, not so my neighbors would be aware of that I'm good church-going folk. When it was becoming obvious even to him that my brother and I didn't want to go to church, he assured us that one day we would want to return on our own, that we'd have a need for it. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but considering the damage he wrought upon his family by thinking with his dick, I doubt I'll ever have quite the need for god's mercy and forgiveness that he does. (My currently eroding sense of self-worth notwithstanding, of course.)
I'll be bringing my book along, just in case. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
At least one person, however, has asked me if I'm leaving because of my atypically clean desk. Hee hee.
I love messing with heads.
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Sunday, 30 January 2000 (with this love - choir) 11:31am It was pouring rain when I woke up this morning. Sadly, SF's lame cable doesn't offer The Weather Channel on Sunday mornings. (Although I did notice that Jimmy Swaggart's wardrobe seems to have been updated. It's like he decided to go for a more modern look after seeing reruns of Miami Vice on TBS. But I digress.) It's very frustrating to look outside, see what the weather's like, and not be able to turn on the TV and have it confirmed. That's what life in the year 2000 is supposed to be about. Dreamed about Mary last night. More accurately, I was holding in her for no appreciable reason in much of the dream, which involved going to Bolinas (or at least what my mind interpreted as Bolinas even though it didn't quite look like the actual place, as is often the case in dreams) and not being able to find Lee. Metaphoric for something, I suppose, though I'm not sure what. My own desire to disappear from the world, maybe. Sunday. Sunday sunday sunday. Man oh man, I don't trust Sundays. Bad things have a history of happening on Sundays. Through most of last year, Sundays were when my resolve would finally crack. The loneliness and despair would really get to me, and I'd no longer be able to fight it off. Things are different now, but Sundays still seem to be emotional low points. I need to go out, and soon. I want to go to Roderick's and dance. Or Shrine. Wherever I haven't done it in a very long time, and I need this. it's crazy what you could have had
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Saturday, 29 January 2000 (passion) 9:41am stop talking. just stop talking. Possibly the wisest advice I've ever received.
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10:24am Ow. My legs hurt. The walk from Maddy's temp job to my office is just under two miles, so that might be it. Didn't used to be like this. 11:17am I saw god. Allow me to explain. The Last Temptation of Christ came out in 1988. It didn't play in Fresno, because of all the very very very stupid people (read: hardcore xtians) who protested its release. I watched a lot of the controversey on television, and was constantly astonished by these people. My personal favorite was one religious leader or another answer to how he could condemn the film without actually having seen it: "I don't need to try cocaine to know what it's like." Oh, please. First of all: yes, you DO need to try cocaine to know what it's like. I've never tried cocaine, hence I don't know what it's like. But I'm not trying to ban the stuff out of a sense of moral superiority, either. Furthermore, cocaine is a drug, with a measurable effect on the body; this is a MOVIE. There is a difference. The furor last year over Dogma was very similar. I didn't get to see the movie until the early nineties; there was a copy in the office of the video store. I say "in the office" because it wasn't out on the shelf. The owners of the chain (at its peak there were maybe two dozen locations in three states, hardly Blockbuster level) refused to stock the movie because they considered themselves good xtians. I'm also told they'd been warned by certain parties not to carry the film or it might hurt their business. In a nutshell, they caved into a boycott threat. Mind you, they were business first and foremost, and they couldn't ignore the bottom line: we had one of the largest adult sections in town. For better or worse, the video industry was built by the porno market which the major chains now pretend don't exist. Le Video's adult section is right next to their laserdiscs and DVD's, an irony of which I'm particularly fond. Without the adult videos pulling in the sheer amount of money which they do, the video industry couldn't have possibly grown and developed to the point of making laser technology available to the consumers. Consider: average cost of an adult VHS bought in bulk is $2. Most storees rent them for roughly that same amount, meaning after a single rental it's pure profit. I'll let you do the math on the profit margin of the these tapes being sold for $60 or $70 a pop. Throughout most of the 80s and 90s, adult video has been responisble for at least one quarter of the overall video market, and indeed helped many stores stay afloat before the monolithic chains (aka Blockbuster) coasted along on the success of the smaller stores, then subsequently destroyed them. I've been out of the loop for the last few years so I don't know what impact DVD and the internet have had on the business, but while the adult VHS market is most likely declining, there's no denying what it did for the industry. Anyway, one of the shows actually played (gasp!) a short clip of the movie, apparently unconcerned about how many souls they might be condemning to hell. In the background was a brief snippet of some utterly gorgeous music. I knew right then and there that I had to acquire the soundtrack, period. The soundtrack turned out to be Passion by Peter Gabriel, and I fell in love instantly. It was like nothing I'd heard before, yet spoke to me as though it had always been a part of me. Over a decade, it's still among my very favorites, with Lou Reed & John Cale's Songs for 'Drella and Neil Young's Landing on Water. Though I know it by heart, I still don't know each track by name. It all flows together as one piece for me. The names of each individual piece is somewhat irrelevant. August, 1989. My brother (not Tom) and I have just returned from seeing The Who in Oakland. Amazing show. (Not quite up there with seeing Neil Young the previous October, but close.) Our mother is gone for the next few days and we both have time off work, so we drop acid. He's done it before, but it's my first time. I'd done 'shrooms with Conk in July, but beyond that I'd never done any kind of drug; I hadn't smoked grass or even drank alcohol by that point, the ripe old age of 16. We'd spent in the night in Oakland after the show and drove back to Fresno the next morning. We got home around noon and dopped. We watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Not because it's an especially trippy film, but because it would be a fun way to spend the time as we came on. When we did come on, I felt neither the urge to kill anyone nor did I believe I could fly and climb onto the roof to prove it. (I can hear my mother: "Even if those stories aren't true, they still teach a valuable lesson about drugs." No, mom, they teach a valuable lesson about how easily people are scared by ridiculous stories concerning issues they don't understand.) Instead, after observing the way the world looked—the slight aura around the candle on the table, the different sheen to Mary's fur, the subtle rippling of the carpet—I wanted to listen to music. So I laid down in front of the stereo and listened to Passion. Not just Passion, mind you, but along with the live version of a "A Saucerful of Secrets" from Pink Floyd's Ummagumma and the acoustic side of Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, it had the greatest impression on me. I closed my eyes and saw god. As I've mentioned on more than one occasion, I don't believe there's a god. (Saying "I don't believe in god" is usually interpreted to mean that I believe there is one but I choose not to follow it, and that's not the case. I don't believe in the supernatural at all.) But I think I understand how those who are so inclined to look for such things might believe they've been in its presence. When, with the proper chemicals in your system and the proper music in your ears, you can see some remarkable things. Whether or not they're profound depends on the individual. I was never unaware that I was lying on the floor of my living room listening to music with a hallucinogen in my system, that I was there of my own accord and was safe. Reality was not different; simply my perception of reality, and said perception would return to normal in five or six hours. So I might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts. Basically it was just colors on a red background. The light was on in the room, so when I closed my eyes I saw red rather than black. The tiny pinpoints of light and vague shapes you can barely perceive with your eyes shut in a lit room moved with the music, and the beautifully recorded and mixed (there's real depth and dimension to the stereo) music was making them do some interesting things. Nothing scary, no voices telling me to kill my family. All in all, very comforting. Perhaps the way believers (or those who desperately want to believe) might feel in the presence of what they think is a higher power. Again, I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing, and do not believe I really saw god or was otherwise visited. I am neither psychotic nor delusional. Even though it was already very close to me, I now associate Passion with acid, and don't consider that to be a bad thing at all. It is a continuous source of comfort, and that's all too rare.
since you asked, laurel.
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Thursday, 27 January 2000 (sandstorm) 6:58am My cold symptoms have returned with a vengeance, mostly in the form of a sporadically but frequently draining nose. Fuck. Among other things, I'd been hoping to get made up today for the first time since Zaleska's visit a couple weeks back. I got zapped last Saturday, then shaved (perhaps a bit prematurely) on Monday morning, and for four days of growth, I'm not doing too badly at all. The redness certainly seems to have gone away, and the shadow hasn't reasserted itself just yet. The magic period. What's more, apparently we're going to be meeting some muckety-mucks for a project we're doing for an organization outside the company, and as such feel like I should make the proper impression. The constant need to wipe one's nose can be very unkind to makeup, however. Hell, even I know that. 1:26pm I wonder if it's the hormones. Hadn't occured to me before, but it makes sense. The hormones may be somewhat responsible for why I feel like I'm on the verge of getting sick for the third time in the last month. At least, they might be responsible for my defenses being lowered. Used to be, I seldom got ill. Something about my moose-like build, perhaps. Although I still have the skeletal structure of a date rapist, my body is not quite the juggernaut it once was. Don't get me wrong, this is a very very very good thing, and I have no regrets in that area. In my research on hormones prior to starting, I'd read that one of their (side?) effects was a certain lethargy, greater difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, that sort of thing. And, lest we forget, weight gain. That's a lot of what motivated me to hit the gym as hard as I did when I started the 'mones, to get my body into the best shape as possible before it became, shall we say, less practical to do so. Bear in mind I'm referring to the reaction of the genetically male body to female hormones. It's a different ball of wax (you might want to pardon the expression, I'm not sure) with genetic females. I honestly don't think the two experiences can be all that closely compared. Certainly there's plenty of fit, active women out there. And a fair smattering of fit, active trannies, too. Emotionally, either. Neither group can really know what the other experiences.
Anyway, I'm just making excuses regarding my shape. But I suspect the hormones
have in fact lowered my defenses to sickness.
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Wednesday, 26 January 2000 (with this love) 7:06am I woke up at around 5am, came out into the living room, looked at the exercise mat which I'd thoughtfully dug out and put into an accessible place for just such an occasion...and went back to bed to sleep for another hour.
Bad. Bad. BAD.
That settles it. I'm Pro Salmon, And I Vote.
The first question they asked was if they could get more light for the videotaping, as my cubicle has no direct lighting. This is completely intentional, of course; the overhead flourescent lights have long since been disabled, and my three desklamps have blacklights. All my lighting is ambient, the monitors are turned down and when possible my programs are red text on a black background—something I can't do on Outlook, natch. One particularly anal-retentive higher-up had objected to the light level of my screens, and wanted not only mine to be turned up but all the screens in the department to be somehow calibrated to exactly the same level. Yeah, that'll really help QA, since everyone using the internet has their screens set to exactly the same level. It's frightening to consider just how clueless the people in charge can really be. Anyway, afterwards I called in for a one-on-one interview with someone whom I reckoned to be the head of the project, a reckoning supported by her business card. I was the first PC user she'd spoken to, and perhaps not coincidentally the only person so far who hadn't experienced wrist problems. I did have some major pain once, when I was working at Organic and forced to use a Mac. Connection? I'm thinking maybe. Something she repeated with an almost mantra-like regularity was the need to get up and walk around now and then, at least once in a while. Good advice; left up to my own devices, I can sit at my desk for hours on end without budging. This is not a good thing, although sometimes there's even work to do. Paige is making me a corset for the show. Not just a corset, actually, but the entire dress. (Well, duh, she's a designer, it's what she does. Pardon me while I indulge my enthusiasm.) I've seen the design, we've discussed the material, she has my measurements—and I'll be purchasing it from her afterwards. Madeline is certainly happier than the proverbial clam about the idea of me in a corset. I need to lose weight. At the very least, even if the higher numbers the scale spits back at me are to a large extent an increase and hip and breast area, I need to reduce my gut. It just doesn't fit. If I could chose between lipo and SRS right now, I'd probably go with the lipo. When I lost weight the last time, in addition to exercising very regularly, I was drinking a lot of water. Even without (as much) exercise, drinking large quantities of water is a good thing for cleaning out the system, and very much aids the getting into of shape. A good start, at least. And, tempting though it may be, getting into heroin is simply not a good idea. Goddamnit. (But I wanna...) (No! Shush.) I'm greatly increasing my water intake, to the levels it was at last time. Needless to say, this results in me leaving my desk much more often.
Synchronicity.
How? How, after my life has been touched by the evil menacing scourge of awful nasty DRUGS, can I possibly find such a thing amusing? Because it makes me laugh. Because sometimes the best way to handle something serious is to laugh at it. Sometimes that's the only way to retain your sanity.
Nothing is above humor. Sometimes it cuts too close to home even for me, but I'm still glad it's there.
Outta here.
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Tuesday, 25 January 2000 (before night falls) 10:09am sfgoth is down for the second day in a row. It must be something borderline catastrophic; I suppose it's possible that it won't be back up. If that's the case...mostly it'll be the loss of mail that'll hurt. The correspondence with Maddy, even though there's very little from before she moved here. And there isn't too much on the web server that I don't have on the hard drive to begin with, since it had to come from somewhere, right?
Can't ignore the lovely irony of it going down at the same time as my computer being
gone. It's been recalcitrant, to put it very mildly. I'll probably be getting it
back from Dana tonight...maybe...perhaps...or could be that it's just plain dead.
And who knows, maybe that's for the best. I've always entertained the notion of
going zen, losing out all the filthy technology which surrounds me, following some
half-baked notion that if I unclutter my life in a material sense that it'll somehow
result in an uncluttering in an mental, emotional or even spirtual sense. I can't
deny the omnipresent liberal guilt element, either, as in "I don't really deserve
what I have." Then again, I'm not sure it's liberal guilt in the classic sense, because
I don't give a damn what other people have, be it more or less. Just that I have
too much.
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Monday, 24 January 2000 (open) 9:50pm No fair. I call a do-over.
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Sunday, 23 January 2000 (troubled) 8:43pm At Dana and Costanza's. They've spent most of the evening trying to coax my ailing my computer into behaving properly. (Am I mixing my metaphors?) Most likely I'll be leaving it overnight. Sometimes it's an outpatient procedure, sometimes it isn't. Either way, I feel both very grateful and extremely useless, since all I can do is sit back and watch. My face is healing up nicely; my neck got the worst of it, really. The first three and half hours or so yesterday weren't so bad, almost (almost) relaxing in that way that electro can sometimes be when the mix of drugs, music and area being zapped is just right. The neck, however, always sucks. Period. There's just no way around it. The saving grace is that it doesn't need to be done quite as often, but when it does...it's both more sensitive, perhaps an evolutionary quirk from proximity to the jugular, and for some reason it needs to be stretched most of the time. So we're talking the skin of the neck being stretched and a needle being inserted, and the more that's done the more painful it is 'cuz after a while it's already zapped skin that's being pulled. Freshly sizzling skin is very sensitive. Duh. Madeline, who rescheduled a vet appointment for Mina to accompany me, picked up on this; the way I was almost spastically clutching the sheet on the table was probably a clue, not to mention the eyeliner-blackened tear she could see rolling down my face. She moved her chair next to the table (Phil didn't object) and held my hand, something I'd wished someone would be there to do on many, many other occasions. The Ex was never there for a session, not once. She didn't even meet Phil until after we'd broken up. I didn't exactly let go, but more than a few definitely made it out of the ducts. Phil seemed more apologetic afterwards for the pain, though he's been there himself and knows how it is. It wasn't the pain per se; it was more of a catalyst. It just got me to thinking of how tired I was, how completely fatigued I felt from the entire process. I'll say this much, though: crying can do neat things to makeup. I don't wear mascara so I don't get the stereotypical Tammy Faye-esque running (thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou), but the eyeliner smudges in ways I could never hope to achieve on my own. Maddy calls it "trashy," which is of course the highest form of praise.
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Saturday, 22 January 2000 (zaar) 7:55am I'd almost forgotten how it feels to not sleep enough, that heavy feeling in chest/throat area when you first get up. Haven't felt it in a very long time, although it used to be a constant companion, especially when I worked at Autodesk. I suppose I should get used to it again. 6:55pm Five hours. Fatigue. I'm so tired of this. I just want it to be over.
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Friday, 21 January 2000 (a different drum) 8:43am Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy. 9:52am Sonofabitch—I missed the total lunar eclipse last night.
I guess I was distracted.
oh no, it is everything they said it was 11:18pm No Shrine tonight. Because, of course, there's no Shrine tonight, seeing as how it's on Saturdays now. Just as well, what with getting zapped tomorrow morning. Vicodin oblivion. (Leigh had a root canal earlier this week, and seemed very grateful when I gave her a bottle of my vicodin supply. Seemed the least I could do.) Will I cry again? Yeah, probably. I'm almost beginning to consider that to be a necessary part of the process. There's just too much vulnerability happening for something not to break through. Magenta wrote; Paige, ironically, is going to be my designer for the fashion show. Or, more precisely, I'm going to be her model. Magenta says Paige was "extremely excited" to know I was available. Guess she's forgiven me for missing both the last deadline and getting together with her when she was in town. Anyway, it could still fall through, but having a designer interested in working with me probably increases the chances. Now, about this damn gut... Meanwhile, just to make things even more surreal, my mom wrote; it seems her boyfriend (whom I met over xmas) is "asking questions," and as such she would like me to (re)send her the address for "the Goth website." Yikes. I think she's referring to whatever I'd sent her when she asked me to explain how "the Goth of the Littleton shooters is different from your Goth." I tried to explain it (how are apples different from oranges?) but she didn't really answer, though I sent her some URLs to positive news articles which have sense expired. I can just imagine it; they were probably looking at the pictures from xmas, and after seeing my shirt he said, "What the hell does 'perkygoth' mean, anyway?" Oh, I am sooooo tired of this...
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