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Wednesday, 20 July 2005 (never acceptable) 2:02pm I re-opened my gym membership last night. They gave me a reduced rate, though whether it's because I'm a returning member, I live in the neighborhood, I'm cute, or some combination thereof, I can't really say. Not complaining, though, especially since it was less than I'd quoted to Tim. Hooray for small miracles.
Working out this morning felt good, comfortable. The stereo speaker continues to be right above
my favorite crosstrainer, but instead of dance or moron rock it was set to a "light jazz" station, which
is much easier to drown out with my headphones. May not even need earplugs this time around. I do wish
the gym opened before seven, but you can't have everything. It's a good thing I can roll into work around nine
and not have it be a problem.
Man. If that isn't a vision, I don't know what is.
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Tuesday, 19 July 2005 (the last refuge) 9:53am Negativland is playing two shows at the Great American Music Hall in October. Oh my yes. | ||
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Monday, 18 July 2005 (unsafe places) 9:06am Easy come, easy go, y'know what I mean? 1:50pm Pirate Cat Radio is off the air, both broadcast and online. No biggie, since this week is going to be mad busy anyhow. I'm opening for Lynnee Wednesday through Saturday night, Friday night I'm co-hosting the Queer Open Mic with Cindy before Lynnee's show. and Sunday is Bad Movie Night. So, a few mellow evenings would be a good thing.
I still have bruises on my arm from a single 22-gauge needle used in the play piercing class a week and a half ago.
(25-gauge needles were also used, but only the 22 left a mark.) Collette used three 22 gauge needles on me this past Saturday night. Thirty-six hours later, there's no hint of bruising. Go figure.
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Sunday, 17 July 2005 (drown your scars) 10:51pm Collette and I went to The Mint last night to do the karaoke thing. I'd originally been thinking about Annie's, but it was fairly early in the evening. The karoake at Annie's doesn't start until later, whereas I knew The Mint would already be in full sweet. Granted, we ended up waiting nearly as long in The Mint's queue as we would have waited at Annie's for them to get rolling, but that was okay. I liked the crowded, drunken energy. Conventional wisdom has it that karoake at Annie's is much more friendly and welcoming than The Mint, which has a more hardcore crowd. That, to me, was all the more reason to go to The Mint. (Hole's "Malibu," by the way.)
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Saturday, 16 July 2005 (plausible accessibility) 1:23pm From my notebook on Thursday night: 10:00pmI guess I shouldn't be surprised by this, but it's very difficult to simply sit and write at the Power Exchange. Even in the non-sexual game room, with the pool tables and vending machines, the sight of someone sitting on the couch by themselves writing is strange and confusing. Three people asked me what I was writing, and two of them sat down next to me as if to ensure that I would be properly distracted, including the previously mentioned schmuck in khakis. I'm sure he's a very nice person, but his attempts at I'm Cool With You small talk only served alienate me from him Even trannies who are comfortable with themselves don't like having their lives reduced to a clothing fetish. I mean, I am a clothing fetishist—it's something Collette and I have in common—but in a different way. Anyway, it's an experience I'm not sure I'll be repeating anytime soon, at least not in that particular format. I wasn't as squicked out by being topped by a boy as I might have expected, but there wasn't a moment that I didn't wish it had been a girl, and I was always relieved to feel the touch of his girlfriend slash slave. That was the other big problem: I'm just not into dominance and submission (not without money involved, anyway), and they were all about the ritualistic element. He had a curvy, gold-colored knife with an ornate handle, carved into the shape of what I presumed to be one of the less zaftig fertility goddesses. It was very important that I hold it at times, keeping my thumbs over the figure's breasts. Okay, sure. It means something to them, and I'd willingly entered into their thing. Overall, their tone was very solemn. As solemn as possible with the overloud music and wankers watching and wanking from the other side of the fence, anyway. Personally, I think sex and/or s&m should be fun. No matter what me and the other person are doing to each other, there's always room for laughter. Done properly, it adds to the overall experience. Mind you, I get off that particular train way before it reaches clown porn. (To further this tangent, I'm told that guys who are turned on by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence while the Sister is in habit and whiteface are called clownfuckers.) Thankfully, the d/s elements were light. Tthe only thing I didn't care for during the scene was at the very end, when he told me to kneel. I was breathing heavily from the final flogging, and kneeling was more relaxing the standing at that point. Brace Yourself, he had said. It's Time To Pay the Piper. Knowing full well that I was veering wildly off script and further supporting his contention that I'm too cerebral, I had replied, if that's the case, wouldn't it be better to relax than to brace? He paused for a moment, and again said Brace Yourself. So, I relaxed as best as I could, which I should have been doing all along anyway. I was already rushing hard, had been for a while, but I have some experience with relaxing my body under duress, as my relatively hairless face will attest.) But I don't like kneeling, kowtowing, submitting. Really, really not. It simply annoyed me in church when I was a kid, before I understood the significance of it, and now it bothers me highly. His girlfriend knelt beside me, and I got the feeling that she was down there more for my sake than anything else, since I hadn't heard him tell her to kneel. Maybe he didn't have to say it in words. Whatever brought her down there, I held onto her arm, comforted by her presence.
Aside from my cami top being pulled down to facilitate breast access, I kept my clothes on, though I wasn't dressed in head-to-toe flannel to begin with. (Having dinner by myself at We Be Sushi earlier in the evening, a dyke couple was sitting down just as I was getting ready
to leave. One of them looked me over and said, You Look Like You're Going To Have Fun Tonight. i certainly hope so, I replied.
As I stood to put my jacket on, I looked at the mirror lining the wall next to my table, and saw her appreciatively looking at my fishnetted
legs, under a black half-slip. Usually I miss it, but I'm pretty certain it had been a flirt.) As I was fixing my clothes and gathering my stuff, we talked about possibly doing it again. I was noncommittal. We determined
that we were on at least one mailing list together (or so I'd thought at the time), and he said I'll Expect An Email From You Tomorrow. My
hackles immediately went up. Oh, you will, will you? Dude, the scene is over. You don't get to "expect" anything from this point onwards. Aloud, I simply said, no promises. And I left.
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Friday, 15 July 2005 (the feet of a harlot) 9:29am Granted, I was told I'm too cerebral, but I took it as a compliment all the same. I can't not be pleased. Being considered intelligent is evidently very important to me, especially since I feel very stupid most of the time. A woman at the Good Advice reading said I Wouldn't Have Guessed You Weren't Born A Girl, which pretty much tops the list of things tranny girls like to hear. My mood was brought back down towards the end of the evening by a clueless schmuck in khakis who asked, Do You Dress Like This All The Time? He didn't mean exactly what I was wearing at the time, but you know, do I dress like a girl. Since I'm obviously not one. Keeps me humble, I suppose.
The comments about my brain and my clothes were made at the Power Exchange last night. It was an interesting experience, as the marks
on my back will attest.
Tim's been out of the office for a couple weeks, and was around for barely half an hour today before he left again, heading up north to
the aforementioned event. He was in a bouncy mood even by his standards—he said that I'm looking especially pretty today,
which is odd considering that I'm sans makeup and my hair is willfully unstyled—so I decided to take advantage of the hot iron and
ask about the gym membership. He said he was cool with it. Yay. I may fit into my shiny pants again..
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Thursday, 14 July 2005 (edge of the seat) 9:54am Feh. I almost got out of it, but the bastards nabbed me: I have to report for jury duty this afternoon. 3:30pm You Will Not Be Released Until The Court Releases You.
Says it all right there, really.
In the jury assembly room. The pen. This part isn't so bad. The chairs are comfy, and the lighting is modern and subtle. Besides,
in here, it's just a numbers game. Random numbers, sure, but it's out of my hands. All I can do is sit back until I'm called, or not.
Getting called for the next stage, that's where the panic sets in. The thought really does give me a feeling not unlike panic. This is
not me being lazy or shirking my civic responsibility. The courtroom last time made me overwhelmingly anxious. It's a terrible
feeling. That alone is a good reason for me to stay on the straight and narrow, at least legally speaking. The thought of being on
trial is horrifying, or even simply having to deal with the court on a regular basis.
Things which I shouldn't have in my bag, but which were not found during the cursory security check: my Negative Energy Knife, two
books of matches, and a few condoms rescued from The Power Exchange. Those last probably wouldn't be a problem.
My reading material is Susie Bright's
Mommy's Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn and Cherry Pie. One passage really leapt out
at me:
The main clock in this room has no hands. How appropriate is that?
2:24pm There was a certain temptation to just go home, but instead I returned to work. My office is a fifteen minute walk from the Hall of Justice, and what's more, I have a reading tonight at Modern Times. Wouldn't have been much point to drive all the way home from SOMA only to turn around drive out to the Mission.
Besides, I was hoping Maddy would be online. She hadn't shown up on IM at all that morning, and it made me sad. Quite often, the absence
of her in my life hurts, and the apartment feels empty. (When I was telling someone that I'd broken up with Maddy shortly after
it happened, I said that it was difficult. So Don't Do It! was the reply. Thanks.) Even though we do sometimes snark and fight, chatting with her makes it a little easier to deal with. Don't know if that's strictly healthy or not, but that isn't the point, either.
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Wednesday, 13 July 2005 (outrospect) 8:52am Say, remember that thing that happened that time with those people? Boy, that sure was something, huh? 11:32pm From my friend Ali's blog: My thighs are lined with marks from a cane, some of them a day old, some of them nearly a week. Fat purple and yellow bruises from feet and fists. My shins and knees skinned raw from exertion on hard tiled floors. Bite marks and scratches across my throat and shoulders. And that big, satisfied smile of the extremely satisfied traveler. What an amazing week.God, that's beautiful. Both the sentiment expressed (livinghardliving) and how she expresses it. Ali's talking to Annie about the webmonkey position I declined. I hope she gets the gig, as it would be nice to keep it in the family. Meanwhile, with Annie's encouragement, I'm pitching an article to Girlfriends about her Love Art Lab project. She wants to see it happen as much as I do, so I think there's a good chance.
It's so funny how life takes sudden left turns. Mine certainly does, anyhow. I wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes it's painful in a bad way, but sometimes it's beautiful.
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Tuesday, 12 July 2005 (the secret scene) 2:54pm If you can't bring yourself to edit your words because you love them so much, someone who doesn't love them will do it for you, and that's a million times worse. sometime after midnight See, this is the problem with me living alone. I stay up way too late.
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Monday, 11 July 2005 (dislocated) 10:31pm Pirate Cat Radio has been off since last week. In theory, it was supposed to be back up and running in time for my show at eight tonight. By a quarter past nine, it was still down. Of course. As is my habit now at the station, I read comics. I finished The Invisibes: Entropy in the UK and plowed through Legends of Porn: A Cartoon History #1 -- Annie Sprinkle, part of a stack of "perks" which Annie insised on giving me on Saturday. In her description of the nights she spent in the seventies at a New York sex club called the Hellfire Club, this line of text leapt out at me, ironically accompanying an illustration of her getting fucked from behind by a tranny (and one in dire need of a shave, in my opinion): Some nights when I had a lot of sex, I would actually hallucinate without any drugs (I often think that drugs are just the lazy person's sex).Wow. What a powerful concept, especially these days when the good drugs are so much harder to find. The other perks she gave me were Voices from the Edge, XXXOOO: Love and Kisses from Annie Sprinkle, Volume 2, The Best of Vulva Massage, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (classic pr0n, baby!), Candida Royalle's Rites of Passion, Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn (a documentary which I'm very fond of), and Fire in the Valley: Female Genital Massage. (Jesus. I think it took longer to make links for all of those than it would take to actually watch/read them all.) Now, I know enough published writers to suspect that she didn't make a noticeable dent in her swag supply, but it was extremely generous of her all the same, especially considering that was in addition to actually getting paid. She even invited me to sit down and have breakfast with her and her wife Beth, which was no small honor. It was then that Annie commented to Beth that I reminded her of Tina Butcher, physically and otherwise. Compliment accepted. What really kills me is that I was unable to actually fix the problem I'd been brought in to solve. It was well within my particular webmonkey skillset, but the fellow who'd built the Love Art Lab site had done some funky things with the site via Dreamweaver (which I've never used). When he was called in to do the work which I'd been been unable to, he admitted that he'd used lots of cheats and shortcuts and fudged some things in such a way that nobody else could hope to figure it out, and certainly not in the short amount of time I had. (The site had to be operational by five that afternoon in order to qualify for a rather hefty grant.) Still, I felt all kinds of useless and embarrassed. In spite of my glaring failure, Annie asked me if I was interested in becoming the primary webmonkey on anniesprinkle.org (As In Orgasm, she said). Paid, working maybe three or four hours a week. The offer was tempting on many levels—the tracker results alone would be endlessly fascinating, not to mention the hip cachet—but I declined. I simply have too much on my plate right now as it is, and as I inevitably pile more things on (like the silly band idea), and I have a day job which pays the rent, I at least need to make sure that my own projects take precedent. I explained it as best as I could to Annie and Beth, and they said they respected my logic. What I didn't say was that I was also afraid of disappointing her, and somehow it felt inevitable if I took on the responsibility. Better to disappoint her a little bit now rather than in a big way down the road. It's a pattern which has dogged me my entire life, and I'm trying my best to shake it.
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