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Friday, 31 March 2000 (open house) 6:02am It's about the silliest thing I've ever seen: my pillow is covered with black marks. Eyeliner. I've fallen out of the habit of removing it before I go to bed at night, so much of it ends up smudged across my pillow—and, increasingly, my knuckles. I must be rubbing my eyes a lot when I sleep. My course of action is quite obvious: I need to buy a black pillowcase. I mean, duh. Really. When you stop and think about it. Today, though, I won't be going anywhere for a while, because I have to stay home and right for the DSL man (men? I've heard tales of vast armies of technicians, stretching as far as the eye can see) to arrive and do his thing. Which, I suppose, means that I should clear a path to my computer. Seems the least I can do. I had the kinds of dreams last night where when I woke up, I wasn't sure how much was real and how much wasn't. But Lee was nowhere about, my wrists weren't bleeding, and all was generally as I had left it...
welcome (back) to my world, laurel.
I really do have the utmost respect for technicians; the jobs which keep the world running the way we like it tend to be the most thankless ones. That's just plain wrong. The guy was coughing and sneezing something fierce. I suppose it's the cold and flu season, but constantly crawling under desks and whatnot can't do one's health any favors. The wide varieties of dust techies must have to inhale on a regular basis is a horrifying thought. I mostly just sat out of the way and felt useless. Wasn't much else I could but that.
So now it's done. The world spins on.
And, yet, this still looks awfully thick to me for a couple days of growth. I haven't shaved since yesterday morning so I suppose it's my own fault, but is too much to ask that I don't have to shave every fucking morning? Haven't I invested enough time and money and pain towards that simple proposition?
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Thursday, 30 March 2000 (me, i disconnect from you) 6:02am
2:22pm See what I mean?
Not a sound.
Minimum of two hours.
Shit.
I've found a more reasonably priced mover, though by unfortunate coincidence it may have to be on the day that my mom was planning on hanging out with us in the city. Just bad timing, but she seems fine with it; whatever my schedule needs to be, she insists we can work around it, no problem, no worries, it's all good. A far cry from when she used to consider any amount of time away from her while we I would visit Fresno to be a personal affront. Made the hopping back and forth between her place and The Ex's quite nerve-wracking, to put it mildly. Either she's cooled on that considerably, or she realizes that the less exposure her somewhat conservative relatives (I recall her brother once railing on about "that MTV crap") have to the weird androgyne mutation her youngest son has become, the better. In any event, she says she hasn't told any of them about me, and was uncertain as to whether or not she should. I suggested that perhaps it was for the best that she didn't, lest they expend unnecessary energy worrying about what it's going to be like to see me. I pointed out my tactical error in telling her that I'd changed my hair before she saw my bangs, and by her own admission at the time she'd claimed to have spent the previous night fretting over what I might have done to myself. Much to my shock, she didn't argue that point or suggest that I was just making it up, as she has before when I refer to the most infamous Hair Discussion. She also let pass the opportunity to imply that I tone down my appearance—or, if she implied it, it was too subtle and I missed it altogether. As I was talking to her on the phone, my father wrote back.
She's very encouraged by the exchange, is quite insistent that I
be encouraged too, with the caveat that I remember that he's a
raging alkie (I've never known her to hammer that point quite so
hard before, and she also dissed his father once again) and that
I can only expect so much out of him. Frankly, I think she's
expecting a whole hell of a lot more than I am.
everything goes away.
Of course, all things Crow-related (particularly having to do with said film) are anathema in the goth scene around here, and probably in most major cities. And you just do NOT Brandon Lee, even under the cover of Halloween, as the Boi Summer did so damn well. Not amongst El Spooky Kids Para Ess Eff, where there is no greater sin than lacking irony. And The Crow is just waaaaaaay too mainstream. The only thing worse is being a Mansonite, which is apparently defined as anyone who doesn't openly despise Marilyn Manson. I've been a fan as far back as when I thought that Louise and Pandora did the black-velvet-and-pale-makeup thing so perfectly that I couldn't possibly join in since I'm just a big fat hairy schlub so I'd best be getting those thoughts of my misshapen head right goddamn NOW thank you very much. Indeed, it was within a few days of Louise leaving for good, when the pain was at its worst, that I went to the Tower Outlet and bought Antichrist Superstar as much out of curiousity as anything else. Maybe as such it's me being sentimental, but I still consider it a masterpiece. That's how I feel, it's who I am, and that's unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. So on one of our increasingly infrequent visits to Shrine, Maddy was wearing a Manson t-shirt. (One of mine, in fact.) Vlad, who had unfortunately cornered us at our table, commented upon her shirt as though he was telling her she had spinach in her teeth. She wouldn't have worn the shirt had she known, right? Right. A little while later, a Trust Obey t-shirt is pointed out, and a discussion ensues (Maddy and I do not participate, having never heard of the group) about them being the only group ever to be dropped from Trent Reznor's Nothing Records for being too uncommercial. Vlad points out, with a certain smugness that only he can muster, that their replacement on the Nothing roster was in fact Marilyn Manson, and concedes that it was certainly a wise financial move. Well, he certainly showed us. Kinda like that time when, while walking from Tania's place to my car (he unexpectedly glommed onto us for a lift to Shrine), he commented with a snicker that my tennis shoes were "very goth." I hadn't really seen the point in putting on my black pumps to walk up and down the hill from my car to Tania's apartment, but as a proud Not-A-Goth it is of course his sworn duty to remind us damn goths not to be so full ourselves and so serious. And, yet, as a Not-A-Goth he seems to follow many of the Rules quite closely, much more so than I do. I can't help, then, but love the irony that Trust Obey's primary work Fear and Bullets is nothing less than a soundtrack to the aforementioned Crow graphic novel by James O'Barr. Probably Vlad would argue that it's not based on the film or anything to do with Brandon Lee (we'll ignore the dedication to Brandon Lee on the inside of the graphic novel, following an introduction by Trust Obey's songwriter John Bergin), so it's okay. There's no mainstream connection to them. He can't be accused of liking anything remotely cliched or trendy. He's certainly not trying to accomplish the twin feats of having and devouring his cake simultaneously. (I'm certainly not going to make any jokes about eating crow. That would be just wrong.) And, my god, the stuff is as dark and mopey as you can get. Maybe I should give Vlad a stapler next time I see him.
If any, I suspect lesson to be learned is the one I've always known: like what you like. Be what you are.
And whatever it is, don't fight it. Lighten up, kiddo, you'll live longer.
but it's still a struggle to keep the anger and resentment at bay, isn't it? whether or not you have any right to feel it seems less and less relevant all the time...
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Wednesday, 29 March 2000 (trouble with classicists) 6:08am With all due respect to Aislinn, there is a single straight character in Poppy Z. Brite's The Lazarus Heart. On page 235, and I quote: In a room painted the color of dead violets John Harrod is fucking a black girl up the ass.See? As straight as the day is long. 9:07am No reply from my father; I guess he's satisfied to leave it at that. "[Acquainted] with yet another lifestyle." And he can even live with me not choosing a "J" name.
barefoot will be seeing him this weekend, and I suspect he'll get the question
that my father couldn't bring himself to ask me: do I still like girls?
just keep your head down... 3:42pm It's not a "lifestyle," it's my goddamned life. There's a difference. And I didn't choose it, any more than I chose my name. They chose me. Because, you see, the progression goes like this. "Lifestyle." "Lifestyle choice." "Well, they chose that lifestyle, they have to accept the consequences." I know my father well enough to know that's how his mind works, the kind of mind which thinks going to church every Sunday morning will wash away his sins, that if he ignores the queers they'll go away, that if they demand the right to exist they're asking for "special privileges." Says so in the Bible, y'know. If someone were to decide that I was an affront to their God and put a bullet in my head to compensate to for my unnatrualness, well, you know, that was the chance I was taking with my "lifestyle." If I never see him again, would he notice? Would I? In one of those infrequent coincidences which is statistically insignificant yet still results in pattern-hungry humans saying things like "It's a small world," I went to high school with a niece of my father's wife. Had my father at any point ever deigned to inform me that they'd gotten married, I might be inclined to refer to her as my stepmother. But he didn't, so I'm not. In truth, she's a very sweet woman. A bit dingy, but sweet. And I guess her natural haircolor is blonde, because according to my brunette mother—who bears no ill will towards the woman—she fulfilled my father's lifelong desire to "have a blonde." Amazing how different our aesthetics can be. Anyway, I figure I'm either a subject of some discussion at my father's house, or none at all. If it's the former, I wonder how far the news will spread. If to the niece, since she knows me and all, there's no telling, particularly if she still associates with any of my old classmates. The particular group I'm thinking of, I hesitate to call them "friends," per se. We sorta kinda were, but not really. We had some classes together and all edited the snooty "Literary Magazine" our senior year, but I wasn't quite in their circle. I was very close to one of them in elementary school, but as we got older I became quite the social liability. I gravitated towards the geeks and nerds, seeing as how I was a geek and a nerd. He was not—at the very least, he was much cooler about it than I could possibly hope to be—so he went in a different direction and had no apparent bones about distancing himself from me socially. I can't say that I wouldn't have been equally mercernary had I been given the same opportunity. I can't say that at all. It makes me all the more anxious and apprehensive about the eventual "official" reunionm likely to occur next year. I'd like to think that I won't be recognized, but of course I will. I am no way obligated to go, but of course I will. Of course I will.
I've been feeling a weird salmonesque urge to return to Fresno anyway. (Well, salmonesque
except for the spawning part.) Not for good, obviously, but there are certain places
I want to go, places I never went to much before in the first place because I never
felt quite right. A couple bars and clubs, things like that. Why? I'm not at all
certain. Maybe I have a much deeper need for justification/vengeance than I'd suspect.
Not that I understand how that would be accomplished. this town, this society, it
tried to make me one thing, i became another, fuck you very much. Not a very
healthy attitude, perhaps, but at the same time I can't help thinking it's very
natural...
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Tuesday, 28 March 2000 (in habentibus symbolum facilis est transitus) 9:17am Bought a new CDR drive last night after work. I was sick and tired of wrestling with my old one—it was morally wounded, and that was that. The new one works nicely and has much neater flashing lights. Resuming that particular habit will make me happy, and that's what retail therapy is supposed to do. Tried once or twice to get online, was told the line busy. Fine, whatever. Being online seemed very unimportant. For kicks I tried again this morning before leaving for work, and got a hardware error. Probably jostled the modem cable when I was installing the drive last night. Oh well. No biggie, can be easily fixed when I get home tonight. The Fidget Queen was out yesterday. I just got to work a little while ago and he's not in yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. So I have mail from both my mother and my father. I read my mother's first—seems she tried to call last night and got the "this number has been disconnected" message. Uh-oh. I checked my online bank statment thing: the check I wrote to Pac Bell over two weeks ago has never cleared, which means they probably never recieved it. Shit. This is bad, though I have to savor the irony of my phone being disconnected a few days before getting DSL installed. Then again, what the hell, I seldom get regular phone calls anyway. All the same, I'll be calling the phone company today to get it straightened out. Enough stalling. I read my dad's message. Okay, a bit more stalling. It started last week with him (finally?) noticing the name "Sherilyn Connelly" in the cc list of an email, and he asked my brother jonco a very reasonable question:
What is it with middle-aged people and ellipses? I can't deny that I'm fond of them as well...but what's with using six where three will do? Ahem. I digress. jonco replied:
Which ain't no lie. It was at this point that I became aware of the correspondence, and should have leapt in right then and there. But I didn't, what with me being an abject pussy and all. My father then asked:
After which point I leapt in. Outing me to friends and extended relatives is one thing; to my father is another. Mind you, if anyone had felt comfortable doing it they would have by now, as part of me has always wished they had. But jonco wasn't about to, and fuck knows he shouldn't have to clean up my messes. So I spent a long time yesterday writing a probably overly simple response:
Sometimes I feel like a physics professor who's written an utterly incomprehensible formula on a chalkboard, using symbols and concepts her novice students can't begin to grasp, who then turns and says, "Any questions?" Not very fair at all, to give barely enough information from which to even guess what the right questions might be. Still, though, I guess I can't complain about his response:
Yet, somehow, I suspect I will. oh, fuck, not the "L" word. anything but that. See what I mean?
Oh, and he is in today.
It occurs to me, my mom's email about my phone being disconnected came roughly fifteen minutes after the email from my dad. Likely scenario: he responds to my mail, calls her for the first time in ten years just to say "What the fuck is the deal with that son of yours, anyway? He's gone queer!" at which point she calls me, discovers my phone's been disconnected, freaks out... I exaggerate. I'm sure he didn't phrase it like that. But the buzzwords were pulled out, huh? "Lifestyle." That's how his generation thinks. That I have an "alternative lifestyle." I went through this nonsense with my mom last year, and I'm not surprised that it should be happening again. As for having to "become aquatinted [sic] with yet another lifestyle," well, shit, he didn't know a thing about my previous "lifestyle," so I don't see why has has to becoming "aquatinted" with this one. What the hell does "aquatinted" mean, anyway? Is that like getting ocean waves painted on the side of your car rather than flames? Speaking of dumb mistakes, I just realized I made one of my own. I forgot to copy over the very last line of his email:
Once he got the namesake thing out of the way, of course. The firstborn was named after him, but said firstborn was not actually born to the woman he married, so being a good Catholic he disowned the child. An illegitimate child in a good Catholic family in Bakersfield? Ain't gonna happen! It's scary to think that if my father hadn't decided to go to Fresno State University, I would have grown up in Bakersfield. Scary? Make that mortifying. So, with that slate wiped nice 'n' tidy, he then got hitched and named his second—um, I'm sorry, his FIRSTborn (no, really!)—after himself. The one he could take to church and show off to people so they couldn't doubt his virilty. See? I fucked, and made another of myself! I'm immortal, I tell ya, immortal!!! If the next kid had been a girl, I wouldn't be here now. They would have had their perfect family. Alas, it was not. So they tried again. And again. When I showed up on the scene, they declared the wad shot. In essence, the only way I could have had a sister would have been if she was older than me, and there'd been no other boys born. Say, had the first three been girls and then I came along. My siblings and I were brought into the world for statistical purposes. Anyway, I'm uncertain of the exact genesis of the "J" thing. My paternal grandfather's name was the same as my father's, if I'm not mistaken. (Oh, my mom hated him. I didn't realize until very recently just how much my mom disliked that man.) But my father's brothers have names with different first initials, so that's not it. Hmm...this had never really struck me before, but the closest female blood relative I have is my mother, and after that nobody until my deceased grandparents. I do have two or three female cousins on both sides, but they were all adopted, and not a single aunt who didn't marry in.
In any event, I'm guess I'm going to find out how strongly he feels about the "J" thing. Who knows, my "lifestyle" may
not bother him as much as me throwing his carefully constructed naming system out of whack.
Gets the point across, I think.
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Monday, 27 March 2000 (second GuessinG) 9:06am one step forward. 9:40am Okay, I'll admit it: we watched the Oscars. The main reason was to see Robin Williams performing "Blame Canada" From South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. If not for that, I might have been able to give the entire thing a miss, as I did last year. The year before, the show had already begun when I was making my way home on my first day at Autodesk. It's not film-geek pretentiousness, I swear. It's more a combination of fatigue—I've only recently been able to really get back into movies after a long hiatus following getting a goddamn cinema degree and working at video stores for years—and the fact that I don't care all that much for most of the nominated movies. If Bringing Out the Dead or Fight Club had received the attention I personally believe they deserved (at least Fight Club got one techie nomination), that'd be different. But South Park was the only one that really mattered to me. As I suspected might happen, though, once I started watching, I was pretty well hooked. I unhooked myself just long enough to watch Futurama at 7pm, and the Academy was kind enough to present the Best Original Song category (for which "Blame Canada" was nominated, duh) before that. Bless their hearts. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite as anticlimactic as the "Blame Canada" segment followed by Phil Collins winning for his corporate pop tune from Tarzan. I say that with heavy heart, because I'm an unabashed fan of "Against All Odds (Take a Look At Me Now)". But it was a given: any student of Oscar (who, me?) knows that songs from Disney films win. Always. Which means that there must not have been any Disney films nominated in '94, since I remember Bruce Springsteen winning for "Streets of Philadelphia" and saying in his acceptance speech that Neil Young deserved the award just as much as he did. Tom Hanks, in accepting his Best Actor award, also specifically referred to Neil. (Whether or not this was before he outed his old drama couch, I don't recall.) Students of Oscar (who, me?) also know that the Best Actor/Actress awards tend to go towards people playing characters who are diseased, crippled or otherwise afflicted. Which is why I'm expecting a small backlash against Hilary Swank winning for Boys Don't Cry. Well, I don't know if "backlash" is quite the right word, but when the Tom Hanks won for Philadelphia, a lot of people said it was just because he was playing a homosexual who died from AIDS. Or Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Most likely Hilary Swank's award will be brushed off in a similar fashion by many, which will connote that transsexuality is a sickness or a handicap. Oh, the sparks are gonna fly, I just know it.
The bottom line, however? Angelina Jolie—whom salon.com referred to as "looking like a vampire bat"—is my new hero. Ouch.
I'm not brave. I'm not courageous. I'm none of those things.
I never have been.
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Sunday, 26 March 2000 (don't dare me to breathe) 7:39am Sunday. Blighted, accursed Sunday, the day god shit on the monstrosity of a world he'd created. Which is kinda ironic when you think about it, since that's how he created it to begin with.
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Saturday, 25 March 2000 (letter Never seNt) 7:54am As much as it goes against all human experience, I had a guidance counselor in high school who was worth a damn. Part of what made him so great was that he was very, very weird. And this wasn't a "I'll act nutty to connect with the kids" kinda act, neither. This guy was genuinely nuts. Among other things, he brewed his own beer in his garage. A guidance counselor who had his own brewry. I'm no fan of beer (though I'll admit I drank more of it in my teens than I have in my twenties), but still, how cool is that? He never did anything that could be construed as encouraging minors to drink, though he did make it known that he was looking for someone to design a logo for when his company started marketing their product. Reminds me of Brooke Shields in the seventies, starring in movies she was too young to see. It also occurs to me now that he was a catalyst in The Ex and I getting together. Unintentionally, of course, no more aware of it than we were at the time, but because of him and his unending quest to explore the caves of the Sierras, I was there with The Ex in her near-catatonia after her boyfriend dumped her in the spring of 1990. Fate has its own rhythms. Anyway, he gave me a piece of advice which I now wish I'd followed, and most likely would have if it had fit into my college plans: learn latin. A dead language, yes, but one from which many others sprang. Learn latin, and the rest will fall into place. Not surprisingly, the high school didn't offer any latin classes, and I was never able to fit it into my college schedule which was streamlined with the earliest possible graduation as the goal. I took very few classes which didn't serve that purpose. I do wish I could have. Now, I suppose, my primary excuse is the same one I have for why I don't write or exercise more: garsh, I just don't have the time. I'm sooooooo busy. Words have power. I believed it then, and I believe it now. Human thought is inherently abstract, expressed through language but losing much of their power in the translation. (As Lou Reed put it, between thought and expression lies a lifetime.) The better words and language can be understood and used and owned, the closer one can come to something resembling truth. Maybe I just need to read more.
My time here is short. (So is yours, but I'm not talking about you. I don't
care what you do with your time.) I have to make the most of it. I know it's
possible. she did it, so can i. i'm not jealous, i'm completely fucking
terrified. trust me, it ain't the same thing. So where's that spark? Where's that
inspiration? Am I devoid? Have I nothing to tell other than
what's already been?
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Friday, 24 March 2000 (cornerstone) 6:02am Rod Serling was hitting on me in a dream last night. He was persistent but not overly aggressive, although I had to explain to him that I'm taken, I don't care for smokers and while it was very sweet of him to say, we'd only just met so he couldn't possibly love me. And at least I was able to get him to stop pawing me.
I have a blister on the side of my left foot from the buetz. Not a bad
start, really.
This morning I took the car to a garage recommended by Dana to get the passenger side door fixed. From the get-go it was clearly a day that I shouldn't be driving, although I did somehow manage to get there without causing a major accident. (The CHP car which I nearly collided with was very kind not to pull me over, I must say.) I felt like a total chode as I tried to explain what was wrong with the car, and even a statement as simple as "The door won't open" has a very retarded ring to it. Maybe it's because I'm somewhat familiar with this sort of thing from an IS perspective, and have a great deal of respect and sympathy for people who have to deal with problems and complaints. Especially when coming from someone like me, who barely knows what they're talking about. The mechanic inspected the door and managed to open it, mostly through brute force. Forcing the door open had not been an option for me, even if I could have done it, because I didn't want to risk further damage. Which I'd like to think is kinda conscientious of me, but the reason the door wasn't opening suddenly became very obvious. Certainly something anyone with half a brain should have noticed. Whoops. I wish I was mechanically inclined. I really do. I don't consider it a gender issue at all, not something that's "too masculine." Fuck that. When something goes wrong with my car, I want to have a fighting chance of at least diagnosing it and not feeling so completely helpless. At least I can wire electronics equipment like nobody's business, and am pretty damn good at troubleshooting HTML. Not quite the same, though. Anyway, he told me to come back in twenty minutes, so I went walking. It was 9am, and most of the nearby stores weren't open yet. Maybe it's the early riser in me, but I've always liked the vibe you get from a neighborhood of storefronts that hasn't quite come to life. Except for the Starbucks and the Noah's, of course. They were bustling. I was walking by The Beauty Store when a flash of red very similar to the chunk in my hair caught my eye. It was, in fact, a crayon-red Cleopatra wig for $41. ("Cleopatra" according to the tag, anyway. It could have just as easily been called a "Betty Page" wig.) I stood transfixed for a few minutes, both wishing and being very glad at the same time that the store wouldn't open for another few hours, because I may well have gone in and bought it right then and there. Having killed enough time, I headed back to the garage. Not that I need a wig, I ruminated. That's always been a point of pride with me; I may be one of the few trannies who has never even tried one on. My own hair has always been sufficient, and the wig isn't a different style, just a different color. Put simply, it wouldn't be cheating. It's not like I'd have a buzz-cut underneath it for public consumption, lest people think I'm a faggot. Couldn't have that. Besides, as has been pointed out on a few occasions, my own hair is so thick that I may not be able to wear one properly anyway. That darned physics getting in the way: my hair's gotta go someplace, and there's a whole lot of it. Having successfully talked myself out of it for the time being, I retrieved my car and drove to work. Made it in one piece, remarkably enough. Whereupon I discovered that I have been functionally outed to my father.
It was inevitable, and I know lots of people think I should have done it by now,
and they may be right, but still...damn.
it's nothing that you've done 3:46pm So Pike has a Tina the Troubled Teen t-shirt. He tells me that the last time he wore it, TFQ looked at it and said, "Oh, my god, that looks just like Jeff!"
Every once in a while, it's nice to know your efforts are being rewarded.
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Thursday, 23 March 2000 (elysium) 6:02am This day could be devoid of drama. No, really. I could go the whole day without unwittingly saying or doing something to set it off.
Stop laughing. It's possible.
The only person absent was The Big Boss. As we were walking out there, The Den Mother commented that he was sick. "Yeah, but why isn't he here?" I replied, more or less out loud. Brian shot me a look (not one of anger, but of caution), and if TDM heard me, she didn't say anything. Maybe she considered it enough of a victory to have corralled me at all, and figured to let my insolence slide. She knows damn well how I feel about him, although she also can't claim that I'm letting it negatively impact the quality of my work or my overall attitude towards my job—it is, as always, the forced socialization to which I object. There didn't seem to be as much reason to bow out of this as the holiday lunch or whatever the next group outing may be. Pike and Brian both complimented me on my new Fluevog Lucky Burgundy buetz, courtesy of Dana. I've actually had them since last week, but today was the first day I've worn them to work. Besides the fact that I'm still breaking them in—and getting used to wearing buetz in the first place—today was the first day this week I haven't driven to work. An experimental trip to the store the other night made me realize that driving in buetz is kinda like driving stoned: I can do it, but I'd really rather not, and only short distances, please. Hopefully I'll get better at it before the next time I go to Shrine, which as it happens won't be this weekend since it's been cancelled. But I digress. For reasons I couldn't quite identify, I was incredibly nervous when we went to the Fluevog store on Haight, gift certificate in hand, to pick them up. It felt like as big a step as I'd taken in quite some time. It didn't help that while there, seemingly every goth chick in the Bay Area stepped in and looked around. Doesn't do the already fragile self-image a world of good. Maybe part of it was a fear that if I couldn't make this step (pardon the pun) work, then that would pretty much be that. I'd have gone as far as I could go fashionwise. A long way from where I started (thisishowillookwhenimburied, a year ago today, a milestone never passed), but not yet quite where I want to end up.
Anyway, it seems to be working. And that's important when everything else is crumbling. Let us give
thanks...
Needless to say, I ignore it. Ask not for whom the hairy bicyclist hollers, though, 'cuz he was hollering for me. He starts riding alongside me, going on about some show coming up in the near future that he's involved with on some level, involving various punk bands. Some names I somewhat recognize from the club listings in the back of the Bay Guardian, some I don't. I feign interest by nodding and saying "uh-huh," and finally he asks the question which he probably should have begun with: "Are you in a band?" I tell him that no, I'm not. "Oh," he says, and pedals off.
For the life of me, I can't decide if I should be insulted or not.
Sometimes I see something so moving I know I'm not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.
which is why it was a magical time in spite of the horror, a period of
growth in spite of the pervasive death, of transference in spite of the
incontrovertible loss, of doors in spite of the slowly enclosing walls.
of faith in its purest form, not the blind, sheepish faith of myths and
religions but the more necessary, instinctual faith, the spiritual
component of the biological survival instinct: to carry on simply because
you must, to believe that peace will have to return because the chaos cannot
last forever. that your will to live is greater than that of the storm,
and when you emerge, you will be stronger, and prepared to face whatever
may be waiting. it may be the face of love, or your own reflection in the
mirror awaiting guidance, or something different, something you could
have never imagined, gentle with sharp claws, demanding what you never
knew you had to give—
softly twirling in the dim lights
i thought i saw a smile
please forgive me
please don't
please
something's missing, but something is found
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Wednesday, 22 March 2000 (the quality of mercy) 6:53am "...expect mostly sunny skies through Wednesday, with partly cloudy skies Thursday and a chance of showers late Friday into Saturday."
Clouds? We might be getting clouds in the next couple days? Oh thank you thank you thank you. I promise I'll never kvetch about rain again. I just don't want to drive into the sun anymore.
the water is evening now, the catacombs are filling inWoke up at 5:30am this morning when the alarm went off. It was subsequently reset to 6:30 (and we didn't get out of the house until an hour later still), but all the same, I have to take that to be a good sign. I did it when I was at Autodesk. Hell, I accepted the job knowing that it would require getting up early. I think that may have been the appeal, in some masochistic fashion. It was far away, so I'd have to be taking the bus, and even if I wasn't taking the bus the fact of the morning commute made it prudent to leave as early as possible. Even on days that I drove, I still was out of the house by no later than 5am; the gym at Autodesk opened at 6am, and I made the most of it.
According to good ol' Yahoo! Maps, the 24-Hour Fitness at 100 California is .7 miles away from my office, and
along the way between the muni station and my office. What the fuck am I waiting for? An engraved invitation?
Are my anxieties about my outwardly-creeping waistline and the resulting plummeting self-image and the $32 siphoned monthly from my bank account not
enough? Okay, granted, I hate the crowds there. I don't begrudge other people the right to exercise, I just
hate the time limits on the equipment and the vultures and the feeling like I'm in someone else's way. Which
is why I can't get there too early. Too much sleep is making me weak.
Oh yeah. Bring it on.
you can handle the silence, right? right. sure you can. 4:39pm It's an unholy bitch trying to find black construction paper. 10:39pm A character on Law & Order made a reference to "pulling a John Rocker." Hee hee. Gosh darn that liberal media. sometime after midnight Those oh-so-goth lyrics from the 8:44am entry, referring to catacombs and darkness and stuff? They're from an R.E.M. song. Just felt I should mention that. Not sure why, though.
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Tuesday, 21 March 2000 (underworld) 5:58am i can't really know where the line is until i've crossed it, can i? 6:37am Gee, SUVs are dangerous? A penis extension that kills? Who would have guessed? 8:52am In addition to possibly getting some of our first real work in a few months, Brian tells us that one of the header of the cheeses is going on sabbatical, and that Madeleine (note spelling, please) is taking his place in the meantime. How cool. 9:00am redirect the beam, narrow it, sharpen the focus, the hotter it will burn 11:34am There—I did it. I called Lee and left a message. Whether or not he emerges from hibernation is up to him. 3:36pm Four years ago today, I attended a Neil Young & Crazy Horse gig at a bar called The Old Princeton Landing, a place that makes the dance floor at Shrine seem roomy. Going to show that I've always been this bad, I apparently felt the need to document the experience. Rust is the Neil Young mailing list that I was very active on at the time, and "Hip Drag Queen" was my quasi-ironic handle, and "excusable" since it was a reference to a Neil song. (I wouldn't expect anyone to remember, but I actually explained this, and did a better job of it, right around this time last year.) This was long before I came out; indeed, I was still reeling from my encounter with The Other, so I was about as far back in the closet as I was going to get.
Anyway, rereading my four-year old opus, I'm astonished by the level of detail. I was so much better at this stuff
then. A lot of it makes me cringe, but it made me cringe the day after I wrote it, too.
The only negative response was from the deadhead coworker, who objected to me calling him a nazi. In my
defense, I didn't call him a nazi per se, just that he was a nazi in a past life. That's not the same, right? Right.
(Not much has changed, either; some of the most uptight people I've met have been hippies and/or deadheads.)
I had more expected him to get upset that A) I snubbed him and B) and I would have called in sick if I'd subsequently
gotten tickets for that night. I guess you can never tell what people will take away from these things.
Picture an ancient medallion unearthed in some black magician's tomb. On one side is embossed the image of a crow, talons upraised to strike; on the other the symbol of the planet Venus--dripping blood. 6:59pm Buetlaces seem to be Mina's new moral enemy.
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