A new acquaintance had been told Friday afternoon about the evening's original plans, phrased simply as i'm going to the power exchange tonight. Their response was a classic:

why on earth would you go there? this is a great city with many hot sex friendly clubs. power exchange is not one of them. the patrons of the club are just below insects that hang out under rocks. you think your going for some kinky sex club full of attactive people and all you end up with is 50 year old perverts, creepy guys with whips and fat women dancing on poles.

In spite of all the other comparable "hot sex friendly clubs" (which would be the Citadel, and...er...hell, I don't know), I go there because I genuinely like the environment, I've made some good friends, it's fertile writing fodder, and most importantly, it's helping me expand my horizons, challenging my existing notions of myself and my sexuality. That it's a relatively effortless way to piss people off is just a bonus.

Via Trimco Synthetic Hair, my squid will have mostly White (#1) tentacles with a few Light Pink (#23) ones thrown in for good measure. After talking with Rachel on Tuesday night, "big, long and fake" seem to be the operative words.

Speaking of such words, last night Mike Spiegelman and I hosted Caligula for Bad Porn Night. Could have gone to the Rifftrax show at Cobb's, considerably more accessible than the one in San Rafael on Tuesday, but no, we kept the faith and did our gig. Now, for some reason, I want us to do what's generally referred to on these shores as Japanese tentacle rape pr0n. Can't imagine why it's on my mind.

4:57pm

The needle pierces, and the waterline shifts.

9:16pm

Further if unnecessary proof that I have a thing for pushing my luck: I'm at the Canvas Cafe, and I somehow managed to find a place to sit near an outlet, so I'm good until midnight. I'm sitting directly across a guy who was a good friend in film school. I mean, we're not at the same table, but we're all of ten feet away, facing each other. I don't think he recognizes me, and that's as it should be. He doesn't look much different, and I'd like to think I do.

9:40pm

This is how irony works. This is how the universe works.

Vash stayed over last night. She dropped me off at work around six this morning, then picked me up again around a quarter to nine to take me to Kaiser. The idea is that she'll learn how to inject me as well, so that she can do it when possible. We got there a bit early in order to pick up the prescription from the pharmacy, which went smoother than I'd expected. We also got in to see the nurse fairly quickly, twenty minutes before the the appointment was scheduled. Gave us a bit more breathing room.

She walked us through the process, practicing by injecting water into a small rubber ball. The injections will not be going into my asscheek, as originally planned, but rather into my side so I can actually reach it and see what I'm doing. The nurse specified a triangular area into which I should be injecting, and I had her mark it with a pen. I'm strongly considering having the triangle tattooed in, so I'll always know. Though I don't doubt that I can learn to do it myself, the learning curve is a bit steeper than I'd anticipated, what with having to doublecheck for air in the syringe at several points and other details. She also said that once the needle goes into the flesh, I have the pull the plunger back out a bit; if blood enters the syringe, it means I'll have hit a vein, and I have to start the whole procedure from scratch. She says that hitting a vein is actually unlikely—it's happened, like, three times in her quarter-century of nursing—but it's still something I have to be super-careful about. We agreed that Vash and I would return in two weeks (Thursday, February 1, 2007) so she could do the injection, or maybe I'd give it a shot then after practicing at home with the ball and syringes and other neat things she gave me.

The nurse seemed a bit nervous at first, always friendly but a tad uncomfortable. She warmed up after a while, telling us about her gay son who, in addition to being rather femmey, is attending Princeton. The love in her voice while talking about a son whose a limp wrist has a pulse was palpable, and more than a little touching.

It was just past eleven, and neither of us were expected at our respective jobs until around noon, so with a millileter of estradiol valerte pumped into my system, Vash and I had lunch at Japantown. We talked about our plans to do the Bay to Breakers together. Not as salmon, but as pony racers. I don't know exactly what we'll be wearing, but except that it would have to allow for running/walking/hoofing, it'll probably be similar to what we wear for the opening of the pony-related art show she's putting together. (The show hasn't been confirmed yet, but I'm sure it will be.) Me and some others will be part of her pony entourage, and since it's her show Vash of course will be main pony. She told me how, in addition to the usual accoutrement, she plans to turn the hair of all involved into pony manes. I may have the squid by then, but that too can be ponified. (Recurring theme: the catalyzing event of Vash and I coming together was Ali's pictures of herself in pony mode that she displayed in an art show Vash curated. If Ali hadn't asked me to attend the opening—well, Vash and I had been sorta kinda flirting for a while, so maybe something would have eventually happened, but timing is everything.) We have a lot of training to do before then, but that's the fun part.

Almost as soon as I walked in the door, I got pulled into a semi-impromptu company meeting with the HR person from our new corporate overlords, who informed us that starting February 1, 2007, we'll no longer be covered by Kaiser. Didn't take me too long to do the math on that one: by the time of my next scheduled injection, I won't actually be a Kaiser member anymore. Oh, frack. That just figured somehow. Touching the bandaid inside the triangle, a thousand different metaphors went through my head—starting a rollercoaster without a conductor, movies where the hero gets injected with poison and has twenty-four hours to find an antidote, that sort of thing. It's of course nowhere near that dire, but Jesus. Like I needed something new to think about. I'll just go on January 31 rather than February 1. After that, Vash and I can handle it until I find a doctor with trans experience in their system.

Unsurprisingly, the new insurance does not cover SRS, orchies (castration to the squeamish) or any of that, though I'm guessing I'll still be able to get the same kind of hormones. Guessing, hoping, what choice do I have at the moment. When the southern-fried HR person was going over the medical benefits, they said: the insurance doesn't cover anything done to make you pretty. Uh-huh. I was so waiting for them to say something like if you wake up one morning and decide you want a "sex change," it doesn't cover that, either. Don't know if the other trannies in the office would have said anything (for some reason, I don't talk to them and they don't talk to me), but I was prepared to raise hell if that happened. The HR person had probably been warned ahead of time not to go there. At least not in San Francisco, where there's a lot of those people.

She also says that RuPaul, of all people, was sighted. Jezebel herself didn't see Ms. Charles, as she (Jezebel) was on her knees in the Blue Room, but has it on good authority. Damn. I always miss the interesting stuff.

As my health returns, I've been eager to start exercising, but don't dare do much outside until it gets warmer. It's best not to mess with a cold snap that's all but obliterated California's winter crops. Especially the avocados. That hurts.

I did, however, meet with the hair girl. It's probably going to happen over a long weekend day in February or March. This is not me behaving so much.

Then again, maybe it's centered around coffee shops: Vash and I are at the Sea Biscuit, and in addition to the usual assortment of druggy street kids and stinky hippies, a large shaggy fellow who looks like he would have been a heavy in a Chuck Norris movie (Good Guys Wear Black-era) muscled his way onto a couch next to a small woman. When she complained because he started helping himself to her napkins (ew) and was generally invading her space, he said: what are you going to do? call the police Ugh. Men.

On the plus side, my cold seems to finally be receding. My energy is more or less back, and I almost did Bad Movie Night tonight. One of the scheduled hosts nearly had to back out, and I was going to fill in for them, something I so wouldn't have been up for on Friday night. Hopefully I'll be back on my game by Bad Porn Night on Wednesday. I'm annoyed that I didn't make it to the Power Exchange at all this past weekend. Because I was sick. So lame.

Barefoot and Roxanne got me an Amazon gift certificate, which I've used on my first flash-based mp3 player. Not a frackin' iPod, praise Jeebus. One of my theories is that it'll motivate me to start running.

No more cheese and/or sour cream on burritos or elsewhere, and no more whipped cream on mochas or elsewhere. It's the little things that add up.

I did make it to Kaiser for a previously scheduled appointment with my doctor. I swear, the man has such a crush on me. It's okay, though. He doesn't take any liberties and I usually get what I want. In this case, I'm going back on Thursday so a nurse can teach me to inject myself with estrogen, specifically estradiol valerate. The brand name is Delestrogen, which sounds to me more like an estrogen blocker. Anyway, I'll be getting injected every two weeks. The spironactalone will unfortunately still be in pill form, but the estrogen's more important. I'll probably be doing the injecting myself, though Vash has offered has promised to accompany me to the appointment so she'll know how to do it, too. To inject me, that is. Not herself.

After asking about my soma fm shirt, my doctor told me to bring it up on his computer. I did, and we had Drone Zone playing during our appointment.

According to the scale at Kaiser, I weigh 196. That's really not good.

1:50pm

It's being reported by AVN Online, so it must be official: NakedSword is merging with AEBN, the big pr0n-on-demand network. By all accounts, this will not affect my department negatively, or, more specifically, my job. Yay. How this will impact the long-delayed office move is also uncertain. All I know is, I'll be happy to stay where I am for as long as possible.

3:14pm

I'm at the Three Dollar Bill, and I just overheard that last night's Queer Open Mic was one of the busiest ever. Makes me all the sadder that I had to miss it.

3:33pm

Probably owing to his hots, my doctor kept mentioning how I'm one of his "brighter, higher-IQ patients." Dunno if he meant amongst trannies or in general, but either way, I fear for humanity if it's true.

9:21pm

I once again have the urge to get dreaded extensions. Like going blonde, it's one of those things that take a couple of years to work up the courage to seriously pursue. Cost is a major factor, both in initial outlay and maintenance (printers are cheap, cartridges are a bitch) but, well, I think I've managed to work it out. Not owing taxes this year should help.

I asked Temple if she had any suggestions, and she pointed me towards her friend Rachel, whom Temple describes as the only person i trust with my locks. High praise indeed.

I wrote and mentioned Susan Wallace of Switchblade Symphony as an example of the kind of mane I want. I specificed Susan because she's blonde, but in the picture, Tina Root is actually a better example of what I'm looking for because she has bangs. Indeed, anyone who's seen me recently can attest that it's not too far off from how my hair's been looking anyway. It's all about framing the face.

So, Rachel replied: it's funny that you mention susan...i never did her hair, but i used to do tina's hair, her brother's hair and their friends. Goddamn. I do believe I've found my new hair guru.

We'll probably be meeting on Monday so she can look at my hair, determine what colors she needs to order and so forth, though it'll probably be a couple of months before I actually get anything done. Enough time to talk myself out of it, perhaps. I hope I don't, though. I hope I take the plunge. What the hell. Financial aspects aside, the worst that'll happen is I'll find that I start getting clocked more often.

It's such a delicate, easily upset balance, and I often can't tell what will tip it until I'm blindsided and stumbling deep into the Uncanny Valley. I wouldn't have thought that dying my hair pink would have made me look more male. It's pink, for fuck's sake. What screams "girl" in this culture more than that? And yet. Same with getting my hair reblondified; until my roots start coming in, pronoun mishaps and getting called "sir" and those charming compliments on my wig increase. I'd really be fucked if I was a natural blonde, huh? I guess any intimation of fakeness is taken as the proof the inquiring eye needs to determine that, yep, the tall broadwinged "girl" with the peculiar voice may, in fact, be teh guy!!!1!!1! If that's the case, doesn't it follow that something as blatantly fake as synthetic dreads, especially when my roots start to show after about two weeks, will immediately get me clocked as a boy?

What I'm gambling on is that it's such a feminine hairstyle—yeah, lots of stinky white hippie boys have dreads, and some of them even have fake ones, but these will be so blatantly fake, and white, no boy does that, and then I'll probably keep them in pigtails most of the time like I currently do with my regular hair—then, surely, I must be a girl, or at least consider myself a girl and would like to be regarded as such, thank you very much.

Problem: that hasn't worked before. Didn't work when I had the black hair and bangs, the standard issue Bettie Page/goth girl look, the kind of hair the boys simply do not have. I knew one guy in college who had bangs, what would have been the classic Bettie except that it was dishwater brown rathern than black, and oddly enough he was a total metalhead. Sweet guy, though. It fucked with my head that he had the hairstyle I wanted, but, um, he was a male-identified boy. I'm sure I should have looked at it as some sort of genderqueer statement, that he was sticking it to the binary gender power structure and all that. Instead, it just made me uncomfortable.

So. I may well lay out a considerable chunk of change for (admittedly temporary) hairstyle which, for as much as I've been wanting it, will prove to be a crushing disappointment and have the completely opposite effect of what I intended.

Or I may love it, and I may not get clocked more than I already am. I'd consider that breaking even.

What the hell. It's worth a shot.

I stood close enough to hear you say
"Do as the beautiful ones do"
Tore out my picture from its frame
I just wanted to be one of you

Standin' on the outside, lookin'
Funny how you see the truth
But the feeling does come back to you

She's crazy as anyone can be
That's what they say, what they say of me
Wanting love can make one do
It isn't my fault, heredity

Standin' on the outside, lookin'
State of grace, state of sin

Standin' on the outside, lookin'
I cannot feel a single thing
But the feeling does come back again

This morning feels like yesterday
And yesterday follows me around
Where do you go when no one cares?
Six feet under, underground

Standin' on the outside, lookin'
State of grace, state of sin

Standin' on the outside, lookin'
I cannot feel a single thing
But the feeling will come back again

Sheryl Crow,
"On the Outside"

Around nine, I poked my head outside. The rain had stopped, and wasn't going to start again. Cold, but drying. Hrm. Fuck it. Out I went.

Vash was out with a friend, and my only other offer for the evening was from Jezebel. She'd put an ad on Craigslist earlier in the day looking for men to congregate in a hotel room and jorm on her face. I would be the only other girl there, and wouldn't do any sucking. It was sweet of her to offer to let me be present for such a personal thing, as I knew she took sucking dick and facials very seriously, but I settled for just knowing the address and room number of the hotel. Last known location and all.

The Trads were doing their thing when I arrived. Possibly I was just projecting, but it sure felt like they giving me dirty looks. If so, it was probably because Hal and I were talking in the kind of voices frowned upon at more Traditional spaces like the Citadel. Granted, anybody being especially loud or raucous at the Power Exchange is dealt with accordingly, and disrespect is not tolerated. But regulars such as Hal and I are given considerably more leeway.

I changed from my street (read: warm) clothes into my play clothes. My colors were lighter than usual, white tights instead of black, and a silver-white negligee rather than my usual red. The tights were a practical necessity, as my black pairs had long since disintegrated and I wasn't feeling up to wearing fishnets. Form follows function. I decided to keep my suede-with-white-fringe coat on as well, since it was just fashionable enough to look...well, fashionable, rather than simply odd for a sex club. I often referred to it as my Penny Lane coat, since it looks kinda like a coat Kate Hudson wore in Almost Famous. I'm not so arrogant as to suggest I thought it made me look like Kate Hudson, but, you know I am. Monkey see, Monkey do. Besides, it wasn't much warmer inside than it was outside, especially in the dungeon.

I noticed Rhonda walking past the fence, giving the tour to a black-haired girl in leather pants and a leopard-print coat. I didn't get a good look at her face, but her shape and color caught my attention.

As though Hal and I weren't making enough noise, my cell phone rang. Normally it would be safely buried in my jacket inside the long table in the middle of the dungeon so I wouldn't hear it ring, but I was actually wearing my jacket, so I heard it this time. Then again, I'd never gotten a call while at the Power Exchange. It was Jezebel, checking in after BukkakeCon. It wasn't quite the success she'd hoped for. Though she got zillions of responses from the ad, most of the guys couldn't make it past the front desk blockade, a large gay man who was not at all happy about the depravity happening under his roof. (Probably because it was a girl doing the sucking.) As a result, Jezebel only sucked about ten dicks, a couple dozen short of her goal.

Hal and I were on the couch when Rhonda approached with the girl, Zuki. They sat down, Rhonda between Zuki and I. We made small talk, me trying to engage Zuki without seeming too terribly obvious. After a few minutes, Rhonda left to investigate a rumored gangbang. Unfortunately, at that moment one of the trads came over, a spherical fellow made all the more dirigiblesque by looming over us. He attempted to interject himself into the conversation, to draw it away from me, an condescending smile on his face. Fucker. I had a flash of possessiveness, like when I saw the Weasel talking to Jezebel: no fair! i saw her first! It passed quickly enough, though I still tried to will him away, mostly by ignoring him.

It almost worked, until he turned his attention to me, asking a peculiarly phrased question: have i seen you in a non-blonde context? Because of my annoyance with him and a certain anxiety about losing Zuki's interest before I'd gained it, I didn't hear him correctly at first. A non-blonde contest? What the hell is that? When I did parse what he was asking, my annoyance only grew.

After a while he went away, hopefully realizing he wasn't going to score with either of us. We managed to talk for a few more minutes—she's gone to the Citadel quite a few times, has never been to the Power Exchange before, but has always been curious both because and in spite of its reputation—before Rhonda returned and exhorted Zuki to come watch the gangbang. Zuki stood and suggested Hal and I come along as well. Not needing to be asked twice, we got up and followed her.

The gangbang was in a room I hadn't realized existed, a small chamber next to the Cow Room. I swear, the Power Exchange is like Hogwarts sometimes, with new rooms appearing as required. The walls were light blue with a vaguely oceanic theme, fish and seashells and such. The Undersea Room. Of course. (Jezebel would later insist the proper name for it is The Enchantment Under the Sea Room.) Though things were just getting started, the room was already packed with men standing against their will several feet away from the black vinyl-covered bed like the crowd outside Studio 54.

We started working our way through the crowd to Rhonda, who had some prime real estate on the edge of a medical table. Whenever I stood still, I felt hands on me. First it was one lightly brushing my ass, then another working its way around to my breasts, another on my ass, reaching under my skirt and another, and another, and—

My coat was making their job considerably more complicated, but if the Power Exchange has taught me anything, it's that life finds a way. My options were either to leave, which I would normally do when mob-will had overridden individual consent (the hot kitchen rule was in effect), or try to fend them off, or simply roll with it. I decided to roll with it, only deflecting them when they got too close to my dick or ass, especially with their own dick.

Zuki made her way to Rhonda and sat with her on the edge of the table. The guy leading the gangbang invited Zuki to join. She was one of many people restraining the bottom, a girl wearing only a fetishy, shiny black gas mask (distinct from the practical Israeli Army gas mask I got from Ali) and tall, equally fetishy boots which were roped down. The rope around the boots looked exquisite. For the most part I simply watched Zuki, admiring her body from afar. She didn't have large breasts or what the kids like to call "a nice booty," but her body looked good to me all the same, lean and muscular in all the right places, quite similar to Vash's. I do seem to have a type.

Realizing she wasn't likely to get invited to join, Rhonda left the room. I took her place on the now-empty edge of the table, shifting so none of the vacuum-abhorring men could fill it. My hope was that Zuki would join me. Patience was the key, since she was up there for a good long while. When she looked in my direction, I would smile and try to make subtle contact. (come to butthead!) Just so she'd know I was still there, waiting, if she wanted.

One of the ever-shifting cadre restraining the bottom was a girl who looked like she couldn't have been more than sixteen, perhaps even closer to fourteen. Wrong wrong wrong, had to be an optical illusion, my glasses were smudgey or something, of course she was at least eighteen years old or they wouldn't have let her in, but damn, she looked young. Maybe it was the way the light was hitting her.

During a break so the bottom could stretch her limbs and change positions, the young-looking girl started crying. It was one of the more troubling things I've seen there. Zuki and others comforted the girl, and while she could have left, she stuck around.

Eventually Zuki walked back over to the table. I asked her if she was leaving, and she said: no, i came over to be with you. I scooched over to give her room. I replied: i'm glad. i was watching you the whole time, you know. i think you're really hot. We watched the gangbang as I gently stroked her arm, our attention gradually turning towards each other.

The number of hands started to increase. Two hands on her body, then three, then four, five, six, and I was feeling the same on my body. It was like we were going hentai or something. From the moment I'd gone in there'd been at least one alien tentacle on me at any given time. After being in the room for a while, sitting on the table watching her, I'd ceased to notice. When the sideshow of Zuki and I started, they moved on in, invited themselves to participate. We could have left, gone inside the fence where it was safe, but we stayed. It was an exercise in disassociation, focusing on the sensation and the feeling (which, empirically, was nice) and not the feeler. Or, rather, the owner of the feelers.

The frustrating part was that the tentacles were often where I wanted my hands to be. They were bolder than I ((who isn't?) even when I was male I didn't take advantage of the privilege, and I'm not (not not not) male anymore, but because of my immutable shape and size I'm terrified of being regarded as such (the lack of maleness from the lithe and girl-shaped Jezebel gave her an unselfconscious boldness to which I aspired)), since I was trying to be conscious of whatever Zuki's boundaries may be from second to second and to them, to Them, she was a piece of meat, little more. Which, again, she was aware of and allowing, though occasionally brushing away a hand and/or saying don't in the general direction of its owner. I also couldn't always tell whether she was reacting to my hands or someone else's; when I mentioned that, she said with a smile: i can always tell which hands are yours. In addition to becoming increasingly aware of her resemblance to Vash (as I say, I have a type), the blue light of the room gave her a mid-period Alanis look.

We both kept our clothes on, at least the clothes we came in wearing, her in her leather pants with the laces down the side and white baby tee bearing the old Coppertone logo (the girl now had black hair rather than blonde, Zuki pointed out), me in the aforementioned light slip and white tights and suede-with-white-fringe coat, both of us reflectively radiant in the the blacklight. We couldn't have gone unnoticed if we'd wanted. I considered taking off my coat, but Zuki was doing just fine with it on, and I wanted to keep the primary tentacle barrier. Problem was, my phone was still in my right jacket pocket, and it would be easy enough for someone to slither off with it. Every few minutes I tried to shift my jacket so the pocket wasn't quite as accessible, but it seldom worked. It was insured, but considering how I lost my last cell phone, I was not going to lose this one, too. I refused to let that much irony happen without a fight. What's more, I was parked on Otis so I had to move my car by four, but I didn't dare get out my phone to check the time lest I call attention to the fact that it was there. Ah, life on the edge. At least my wallet tucked fairly safely into my right boot.

The occasional hand would venture between my legs. So long as they didn't try to get inside my panties, I was okay with it. Some were scared off by what they found (like Jezebel said: that problem solves itself), others weren't.

The more aggressive and mindless the other hands got, blind and determined as they were, the more I tried to be gentle, to keep her grounded with a positive energy even though I was a stranger.

you're so sweet.

Though I occasionally brushed away a hand that was trying to displace one of mine, I let them go where they would on Zuki's body. Policing her skin was not my responsibility unless she asked me to, and even then, the wise thing would have been to simply leave altogether, to get out of the kitchen altogether. Besides, if I found the tentacle cloud to be tolerable-to-kinda-nice (except for the cell phone anxiety), Zuki was sometimes actively enjoying it, especially when one pair massaged her shoulders. She craned slightly and said: that feels good. thank you. I never have the right to get proprietary, whether it's Vash or Jezebel or this person I'd met just a couple hours previous, and certainly not when they're enjoying themselves. I tried not to get muscled out (they...just...keep...bouncing...back), but who touched her where was her business, and she was taking care of herself quite well. At one point she said to the swarm: let me totally clear about this: keep your hands out of my fucking pants. And they did.

All the same, one of the bouncers kept close by. When the swarm radius got too small, he would say: back off, guys. respect the lady. I listened closely, I always listen closely to these things, and I'm never ever wrong (am I?), and it was definitely singular, respect the lady, not ladies, Zuki was the one needing respect because she was the lady, and me? Not so much, evidently.

Zuki was getting it, though, often saying: you're so beautiful. Caught in the moment, saying exactly what my eternally fragile ego needs to hear, what I once wouldn't let myself believe until I heard it so many times, and then when I started believing it, it suddenly didn't seem so like likely, since I was hearing him and he and sir from seemingly all directions, but I have to try to believe it again.

Hal and Rhonda wandered in and out, working crowd control for both the gangbang (the main event) and us (the sideshow). Rhonda in particular was keeping an eye on at the wankers who would try to get too close to the bed. One fellow was not only standing too close but his dick in hand was unsheathed. When Rhonda told him to get back and put a condom on, that he'd better not jorm on the floor (which is against the rules, in spite of the Power Exchange's sticky-floor reputation), he replied testily in shattered English: mind your own business. Whooboy. Not the thing to say to Rhonda. It was very much her business, both because of her dedication to prophylacticism—she credits a stubborn insistence on condoms dating back to the pre-AIDS era as to why she's alive today, since considering her prodigious sucking and fucking while HIV spread undetected, statistically she should be dead now—and if there's seniority at the Power Exchange amongst the regulars, she's got it.

Hal, on the other hand, stuck close to us. A self-deputized groper who was cleverly if unsuccessfully trying to ingratiate himself with us told Hal to back off, but I said it was okay. It was nice to have someone I trusted close by, though he was in a weird mood: are you going to take her home to mother? Was he really jealous, or just playing at it? I couldn't quite tell. I replied with a laugh: no, i don't think we'll be going to fresno anytime soon. This lead to Zuki and I talking about the Central Valley, one of many mundane topics we would talk about while in that room. The tentacles were never deterred by the subject of our day jobs (she was a clothing designer with a store in Oakland, though she made the occasional cryptic reference to how her clients would react to the network of pink meteor trails my nails were leaving on her stomach) nor traffic conditions on Highway 99 compared to I-5. They didn't care what we were talking about so long as our bodies were present. This was not Algonquin, and while they were not entitled to anything, they didn't pay thirty-five dollars to hear our banter, either.

Apropos of nothing, with Zuki right there, Hal said: i remember when you first saw jezebel. she walked by while i had you on the cross, and your eyes went wide— He demonstrated with a goggle-eyed look which, while not especially flattering, was accurate based on Jezebel's recollection of the event. Indeed, based on Jezebel's recreation of the look on my face, "grinning like an idiot" is probably the most apt term. Presently, Hal said: right then, i knew i'd lost you. It was actually kinda sad.

As the gangbang drew to a close, one of the bouncers said to us: now you have to make each other come. Zuki and I looked at each other and laughed. No pressure, huh? We both agreed that it wasn't in the cards, and that was okay. We were enjoying ourselves plenty as it was.

For the two hours that Zuki and I were in the Undersea Room, we were being touched by a mostly rotating array of tentacles. Towards the end the numbers eroded down to one hardy guy who was focusing his attention on Zuki, from behind. be happy you're looking away from him, I said. She laughed and agreed, saying that had been the case for most of the night.

It was pushing three in the morning when we returned to the Cage. Since we hadn't been in enough crowds with gropey men, we took the scenic route through the Barracks, Zuki gripping my hand. She explained that in additional to designing and selling clothes, she was an artists' model, hence possibly getting odd looks from the marks. She didn't seem particularly troubled by it, though.

I was quite pleased to discover that all my stuff was still inside the long table within the fence, where I'd left it hidden but largely unattended. As we both gathered up our stuff, Hal came up to me and said: once again, you've stolen a girl away. I replied: it's what i do. Of course, what I should have said was: nobody's mine to steal. they do what they want; i own nobody. they are not my possession or domain beyond what they give me and vice versa. No point in getting too deep about it, I suppose. are you going to flog her? Hal asked, clearly hoping that he could, or that I would, or someone. Again, not in the cards. Since it was a schoolnight neither of us had expected to stay so long, but, well, sometimes it's how things turn out, and it was well worth it. Especially since my car didn't get ticketed.

Storm came inside the fence and asked the standard issue question: is this your girlfriend? The mysterious Vash, often spoke of but rarely seen. I said that it wasn't, and Storm replied: you're a playerI Am I?

Hal asked Zuki: you know you're going into sherilyn's book, right? Oh, that. I explained that I write about my life in general and the Power Exchange in particular lately, but I change the names, and that if she's rather I didn't write about her at all I wouldn't. Zuki said she's cool with it, that she writes as well. She then suggested trading contact information, which I'm always happy to do.

Zuki took my hand as we left the Cage and I led her upstairs. The last fellow who'd been touching her in the Undersea Room followed fairly close behind as we talked through the ground floor. Had he been following us the whole time, just in case? That always creeps me out. She simply said no to him, and he went away.

As we walked out to her car, she said: i've never been with a girl like you before. i honestly wasn't sure at first if you were a tranny or not. I said: that's nice to know. it means i'm doing something right. She said that she'd been out on a date earlier in the evening which had gone badly, so she figured she'd give the Power Exchange a try. Huh. A recurring theme was presenting itself: both Ryder and Jezebel had also been on unsuccessful dates the night they met me, and had gone to Divas and the Power Exchange (respectively) to try their luck. It's like I was a bad date rebound catcher. Hey, whatever works.

Standing at her car while she lit a cigarette, I told her that I'm in an open relationship, with a girlfriend and a side dish. She smiled and said i'm glad you have people who love you. Rather than get into the semantics of it all—well, it's really only vash and i who love each other, i mean, there's definitely affection between jezebel and i and we like each other a lot, but i wouldn't say we're in love per se—I told her I was glad, too. We kissed, agreed to keep in touch, and parted company.

11:41pm

Went to see Duck Soup with Jezebel last Thursday, spent the night at Vash's on Friday, went to the Power Exchange on Saturday night solo (but Jezebel came home with me), Bad Movie Night on Sunday with both Jezebel and Vash, Kronos Quartet with Vash and Rimma on Monday, went out with Zuki on Tuesday, Vash on Wednesday, Queer Open Mic is tomorrow—and yet I still asked Jezebel over this evening to watch Galactica with me because I was feeling terribly lonely and couldn't bear the thought of being by myself.

Tired of being sick.