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The interviews on my radio show went okay, but not as well as they could have. My technical prowess with the board wasn't quite up to snuff, having never had guests on the air before. I muddled through, somehow. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night. It'll be nice to not have to be on.
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Busy, emotionally intense weekend. Danced at Swirl, sang "Doll Parts" at Annie's, attended a party which I hadn't thought I'd be able to make, somehow managed to not burst into tears while reading a slightly updated "Two-Sixteen-Ought-Four" at the I Do/I Don't reading at Barnes & Noble (scene 19 is no longer missing), and in spite of being in an emotionally raw state and wanting nothing more than to be curled up in a ball at home, delivered the funny at Bad Movie Night.
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Fallout Watch: I've now officially been snubbed, to my face. It hurt, but an argument could be made that it's nothing compared to how much I'm hurting Maddy. And they'd be right.
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Back at work, my dry fingers stained purple and beige with the makeup which I'd impulsively applied in the parking lot. For some reason, I just couldn't handle the thought of coming into the office barefaced. Though I was off elsewhere having a really great birthday night, my computer at home was recording Lynnee and Cindy's show on Pirate Cat Radio. Sometimes I love technology. I'm listening to the show right now. They're playing lot of goth music and dedicating it to me for my birthday. I love my friends. I'm feeling the need to go out tonight and be bad. But I don't know how or where.
1:05pm Maybe I'll just stay home and write. That's the most consistently destructive thing I can do, the act which gets me into the most trouble. It's astonishing how much damage can be caused by stringing words together and not keeping them hidden.
10:57pm Predictably, the only writing I've accomplished this evening is what you're reading at this very moment. I haven't accomplished much of anything at all tonight. There's a lot to be said for a relaxing evening, but it hasn't exactly been that, either. Mostly I've been bouncing around from one thing to another as my attention span shrinks further and further, ignoring responsibilites both light and grave, trying not think too much about the gathering darkness, hoping that if I don't face it directly there will never be a reckoning. You'd do the same.
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Woke up sad this morning. Not sure why. Maybe it's residual psychic pain from the movie last night. (Hell, I'm a fair-weather Star Wars fan who doesn't feel that artists owe their public anything, and even I felt horribly betrayed.) More likely it's because this is the first birthday since my twenty-sixth in which I woke up alone. Yes, I know, I broke up with her, nobody's fault but my own, and being found with a hickey on my neck less than a week after she moved out forfeits any right to sympathy, but it still all often makes me sad. The whole situation. Breaking up is always painful, even if it's the right thing to do.
11:34am I'm leaving work at two this afternoon, and have permission to arrive late tomorrow. Collette's taking me to dinner at The Mountain House tonight, and she got us a room at an inn in Half Moon Bay. It will be good.
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I turn thirty-two tomorrow. (Pardon my alliteration.)
4:35pm A package arrived for me a little while ago. I got all excited at first, since it was roughly the shape and size that I imagine the DVD-R drive I've been wanting would be. Granted, I don't have my work address attached to my wish list, but there are some people who know it. Turns out it was a box of 2257 documents. Oh well.
11:11pm For my birthday eve, Maddy took me to Spices! II in the Richmond. She'd planned on going to see Cindy co-host Smack Dab afterwards, and then possibly to see Tribe 8 at the Bottom of the Hill (it's either a farewell show or a reunion show, I have no idea which). My fondness for both Lynnee and Cindy notwithstanding, I had no desire to go to either event, though I was more than happy to drop Maddy off at Smack Dab. Instead we ended up going to see Revenge of the Shit. It was the right decision, even if it was a lousy movie. Maybe tomorrow when I have more energy, I'll vent about the final ten minutes.
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Last night was good. Went shopping in the Haight (indulged myself at Amoeba) and had dinner with Cindy before my radio show. I'm feeling uncertain enough of myself and my status in these troubling days—troubles which I brought upon myself, yes, of course, now you know this is what it feels like and all—that it's good to sit down with a friend and know they're still there. Unfortunately, I didn't remember until later that evening that I'd promised her I'd pay for dinner. I totally blanked on it at the time (we ate at Zona Rosa, so it's not like a check was brought to our table at the end), and, just like I would have been in her shoes, she was too polite to say anything. A tremendous heel, I am. The show itself went well. Got more calls than usual, and I read the majority of The Invisibles: Say You Want A Revolution. Stayed awake, even. I must be getting better. i can be as bad as you, and that's what scares you
3:16pm Gah. I've been summoned for jury duty again, next month. Yeah, it's been over a year— March 2004, to be precise—but come on. I vote and I pay my taxes and when I get a parking ticket I don't go into whiny, self-righteous rages about the DPT. (I'm also very conscious of where and when I'm parked, unlike some people, and as a result seldom get ticketed.) And, yet, I resent the hell out of jury duty. Last year was the farthest I've ever gotten into the process, all the way to jury selection, and I loathed every minute of it. Something tells me it'll be even more painful this year, if I don't get dismissed before having to report. Every time this comes up, as well as every election season, I observe that I really need to get my old name off the voter records. Looks like it's happened on its own, sorta. This latest summons is not addressed to Jeffrey R. Connelly (my birth name), nor Sherilyn Connelly (my real, full name), but Sherilyn R. Connelly. It's like I was in a transporter accident with my old self. Besides, if I was going to have a middle initial, it wouldn't be R. It would be J. Not because of my birth name, but because it's a proud tradition.
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10:04am As predicted, I was not up for the Queer Open Mic on Friday night. Given the drama which occurred (disclaimer: me linking to Cindy's account is not the same as me claiming to have been there) (thank you, drive through), I can't decide whether it's for the best that I didn't make it. I wish I could have given Cindy some backup, but it also might have been a tad overwhelming in my condition. I was feeling well enough Saturday morning for the shoot at the Nob Hill Adult Theatre. It was a lot of fun, as I've never been in a pr0n theatre before, gay or otherwise. Not there are many around these days. I held the boom mic, which was fairly tricky as we were taken on a tour of the premises, including the narrow spaces backstage and in the showers and video arcades and such. It's times like that in which I really, really love my job. Granted, working on the show is not part of my job description and entirely voluntary on my part—if I hadn't volunteered, I doubt anyone would have asked—but I was still doing it for work, and the thought of that makes me very happy. It stands in stark contrast to my last couple of months at the internet company last year, under the bad smoking man. I was no longer his admin, which was good, but the work was reprehensible. Okay, that's not true; the work was questionable, managing Viagra sites. (We did no email advertising.) A lot of this involved spamdexing to get the sites higher in the search engines, as well dealing with customer complaints and stuff like that. I was able to keep my head above water by reminding myself that A) at least I was employed, B) that the rotten, nicotine-drenched bastard was no longer breathing his poison down my neck anymore, and C) if I squinted and used my imagination, I could pretend that I was woking in the sex industry. Granted, selling stiffy pills online is only a step or two above being a jizzmopper as far as ancillary sex work goes, but it still beats giving blowjobs on Capp Street, right? One of things that grated on me the most about the job and the work environment was the lack of joy. We were a secret department, not officially recognized or acknowledged by the company on our website or elsewhere. Sometimes there would be meetings with Google right outside our door, and they knew what was going on in there, but managed to ignore the elephant all the same. We did what we did because it was a way to make money, pure and simple, and men all over the world pay good money for hardons. Most men don't want to admit that they may require assistance getting it up, or, worse, keeping it up, so they're more comfortable ordering from a website couched in clinical if grammatically deficient phrases like "Viagra is the first oral drug to treat men who suffer from Erectile Dysfunction also known as impotence." (The lack of a comma in that sentence always bugged me, but nobody else cared.) And, of course, the all important graphic of the Person In White Coat With Stethoscope Around Neck, With Optional Clipboard. NakedSword, however, is free of such euphemism. The jaundice-toothed wretch who used to (reluctantly) sign my paychecks kept a certain detachment from the products his company offered, both above and below the table. They were exploitable niches, and he exploited them. I'm not saying that my current boss Tim isn't filthy capitalist swine, because he is a consummate businessman first and foremost, but more importantly, he loves cock. He's a big, unapologetic gayrod—If you don't believe me, watch the show—and that enthusiasm, the lack of guilt or shame, is pervasive on the site. It's what I love about it, and why I love working at this company. Anyway, I haven't held a boom since film school in the mid-nineties, but Pam assured me I did a fine job, especially given the circumstances. That evening, Collette and I did make it to the Mt. Tam Star Party. The majority of the lecture (on galaxy clusters and what they can teach us about cosmology, which is evidently a lot) went over my head, but that was okay. Sometimes it's really nice to indulge in hard science, to be confronted with an onslaught of numbers and big words. There's so much fluff and mysticism out there, astrology and tarot and beyond, especially in the circles in which I usually run, and it can get wearying sometimes to simply nod and smile and say nothing as they insist that it's all real. Looking through a telescope at Jupiter or the Ring Nebula every now and again helps balance things out for me. Those things are real. They exist. My cold hadn't yet gone away, but I bundled up, and felt fine. After we got back into town, I felt nothing but warmth. But it's always waiting there, isn't it? After the Pirate Cat Radio meeting on Sunday, Lynnee and I hung out for a while, even going on a dogwalk up to Bernal Park. He chided me for not keeping in touch with him as much as I used to, saying I was following a classic dyke pattern. Nothing new under this particular sun. From there, I went to Taos and Kai's place so Taos could reblondify my hair and tweeze my brows. Both efforts were successful.
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Aside from being sick on Friday, this weekend went much better than the last one. Heights were scaled.
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