Survived both temp agency interviews today. I'm feeling better than I did after the last few agency interviews, but neither of them had anything to offer right away. (Do they ever? If the answer is yes, don't tell me.) I did swallow my pride and mention that straits are increasingly dire, and will do just about anything at this point. Which is true.

Maddy signed the lease on her new apartment today. I was supposed to be there on Tuesday for the initial walkthrough, but I didn't make it on time. She was disappointed and upset, and tempers flared, but we got over it. Indeed, the fact that we were able to do so in just a matter of hours shows how well things are healing between us. The Ex and I were still in a state of barely suppressed hostilities by this point, and a month later, as seen in my first entry. Of course, we were living together indefinitely, and I was absolutely fucking batshit. By comparison, Maddy and I are the picture of civility. As she's observed, we're probably getting along better now than we have in the last several months.

We went to the apartment after she got off work. It's just a five minute walk from her office. The view outside her side window is a classic cityscape, a stretch of Van Ness with lots of neon signs, including the AMC 1000, Tommy's Joynt and Ellis Brooks Chevrolet signs. The Chevrolet signs are especially evocative, bringing to mind forties film noir. I'm not sure what they're called, but you know those vertical neon signs where the letters light up one at a time? If you've ever been on Van Ness near Bush in the evening, you know the one T mean. Aren't those just the neatest? None of the signs are close enough to cast a glow through window, but it's beautiful all the same.

The interior is really nice, too. It's roughly the size of our current apartment, with hardwood floors and a much more open feelings. There are also plenty of windows, which should help combat the mild claustrophobia she sometimes feels here, in this place which Allegra astutely dubbed the Cozycave. Maddy doesn't know yet what her new place will be called, but that's because it's an empty shell. When she's moved in made it her own, I'm sure a name will present itself. She's very excited about the aesthetic possibilities, and has requested my input in decorating. If course. I'm willing to do whatever I can do to make this easier on her. After all, it was my idea, and—

Have mentioned that I broke up with Madeline?

It happened on Sunday, before I left to perform at The Dark Room's Bad Movie Night. (Next time I see Lynnee, I need to ask him how to say the show must go on in German. I'll just bet it sounds more impressive in German. Everything does.) I haven't written about it (aside from cryptic references) because I wanted to tell my mom first. We finally spoke on the phone last night.

My mother not pleased by the news. I mean, nobody's pleased by it, but she seemed to take it personally. She hasn't sounded this upset upset since I broke up with The Ex in '99. A pattern, perhaps? Well, I don't intend to get into another monogamous relationship, so I guess I won't be putting her through this particular torment again. Her tone was all recrimination and blame, pointedly lacking sympathy for her youngest child during what some might gather to be a very difficult period. But I don't really expect anything different. I'm the villain in this particular scenario, especially upon cursory examination from the outside.

She doesn't want to know the details, doesn't want to know why I did this. To that end, she said she won't probably won't even be reading my diary anymore. (Yes, my mom was reading this page. I do not have a problem with that.) Even Maddy in the background, vocally agreeing with me as I said that I did what was necessary and that it was for the best, made no difference. I broke my mother's heart, and that is that. Please allow me to introduce myself.

Anyway. I'm keeping the Neon and the Cozycave. Maddy's taking the PC, Oscar and Mina, and anything she needs. I've offered her the bed, but we're unsure whether or it'll fit in the new apartment's bed alcove. She's also undecided about the teevee. The arty progressive in me likes the idea of not having one in the house, and I can watch DVDs on the laptop if I so desire. If she does take it, it'll be no great loss. On the other hand, it'll mean I can't watch VHS tapes anymore, and lord knows I have plenty of those.

But how often do I watch them? Maddy's much more likely to use the teevee than I am these days, so it makes more sense for her to have it. She's not sure about the logistics of the set in the new apartment, and feels guilty about taking it away from me, and...see, this is why things could be a lot worse. For a lot of things, it isn't so much a tug-of-war as you take it. No, You Take It. no, really, i insist. you take it. I Simply Couldn't. please, i insist... I hate fighting over material objects, and avoid it whenever possible.

so what are those "details," anyway?

During the worst of the breakup with The Ex, I used to take some consolation in the fact that whatever else was happening, I was gainfully employed. Yeah, I may have blown my world to bits, but by gum, I knew I was going to be able to pay rent that month. I was the employed one.

Things are different now. It's difficult to find a job, and when I do find one, I can't seem to keep it. I'm a much stronger person than I was back then, which is all fine and good, but I don't know how I'm going to pay rent this month. I'm getting really scared. Good thoughts, well wishes and cash donations (paypal to sherilyn at ossuary dot org if you're so inclined) will all be greatly appreciated.

Shit. This is Wednesday, isn't it? The guy at the pr0n company asked me if I could start on Wednesday, and I said I wasn't sure, and even though I called a couple hours later to say that I could...feh. I'm sure it doesn't mean anything.

I just need something steady, something stable, something which I can count on to make money. I'm heading into a rough patch financially speaking, quite possibly my roughest ever. (Not going to be so great personally, either, but that's neither here nor there.) It's times like this that I wish I was more of the collector that I used to be, so I'd have more stuff to sell. Of course, you have to make more for a living than I have for the last three years. When I'm visiting a friend who owns vast quantities of DVDs, I can't help but think to myself if you lose your job, you can easily get several hundred dollars for those. I don't say it aloud, though.

In the extreme irony department, my landlords are selling a used Jeep, one which would be perfect for transporting dogs. They're even willing to give me a deal on it. That dream is over.

3:13pm

No news yet from the pr0n company. I do, however, have two (2) interviews scheduled for tomorrow morning, at the aforementioned temp agencies. The first is at half past ten, giving me roughly eighteen hours to die in a freak accident. Please keep your fingers crossed.

As I spoke on the phone to the Craigslist spoofers, I did not mention the details of the ad to which I'd originally responded. I will, however, print it out and bring it in. so, is there any chance of me getting the job i applied for? the one which mentions proofreading, one of the few things i'm good at? Somehow, it will make me feel like slightly less of a fool. I'm not sure how, but it will.

Freedom ain't free, y'know.

sometime after midnight

For much of my life, I lived in fear of disappointing of my mother. There was a lot I did and didn't do because of her approval, or lack thereof.

These days...well, getting scolded by her holds no entertainment value, but it's my life, y'know?

I've been trying, honest, but I haven't gotten much headway into the piece for Tina's book.

Anyway, my reply should have been yes, absolutely, sign me up, i'm yer girl. Instead, I said that I'm waiting to hear back about another job prospect. Which is true; I did get a response from a job application. Problem is, it's from a placement agency, and there's a good chance that it'll be a repeat of the last time I went into a placement agency after replying to an ad: I'm Sorry, The Job We Posted Twenty-Four Hours Ago Doesn't Exist Anymore, But Let Me Look At Your Resume. Oh...Er...These Are Your Skills? Damn. You Really Suck. No Wonder You Can't Find A Job. I'm paraphrasing, but not by much.

Wrong answer, in any event. Considering that they couldn't even begin to quote a wage to me until tomorrow, it probably didn't make a difference, but I'm still all kinds of anxious about it. About an hour later I tracked down a pay phone and left a message saying that yes, I could definitely start on Wednesday. I was able to keep the desperation out of my voice, thanks to years of experience.

I finished my Purim story on Friday night, and spent whatever free time I had on Saturday editing it. It presentable by the time I had to leave, though I knew I'd probably make a few changes here and there at the venue before actually performing. Still, it was pretty good as it was.

I've learned the hard way never to assume that there will be sufficient light to read by, and it goes double for new pieces, so I bumped the font from twelve point to fourteen. My standard chapbook font is eleven, but I ostensibly know that material well enough that I can make do with the smaller text.

At twelve point and doublespaced, the story is twenty pages long. At fourteen, it's twenty-five pages. Now, our recently acquired laser printer sometimes chokes up when I try to print a lot at once, so I've been getting into the habit of printing five pages at a time. Just like when I'd printed the last draft earlier in the day, I printed four sets of five pages. Why? Because I'm a friggin' moron.

In the car before I left, I doublechecked the page numbers Pages one through twenty, all present and accounted for. Wouldn't want to get there and discover I was missing page eleven, right? That would sure suck.

The event was scheduled on paper to begin at eight, though the organizers told me earlier in the week that they figured things would really get rolling until nine. It was ten before enough people showed up, maybe forty or fifty, to justify starting. I experienced that phenomenon more than once with Wicked Messenger (except the numbers were more like four or five), so I was quite sympathetic.

About five minutes before I was supposed to read, I was flipping through my story, and realized that I was missing the last five pages. Oh. Fuck. It wasn't something I felt I could fake, either. The emotional crux of the story is at the end, what I consider to be the dramatic payoff, and there hardly seemed to be any point to reading it at all if Ieft out the best part.

I was utterly flummoxed and more than a little embarrassed, and I could my face getting warm, the blood rushing to the surface. It may not have been visible through the layers of pale makeup, but I knew it was there. Thankfully, cooler heads (literally) were around, and it was suggested that I have Maddy (who was at home recovering from strep throat) email me the file. My friend Maura was there, and she conveniently lived right next door to the venue, but her printer was on the fritz. Collette was scheduled to DJ at a party literally around the corner at eleven that evening, but came to hear me read before her set. (After all, I supposed to be on around eight or nine, right?) She suggested that the hosts of that party could print out those last few pages.

Just as they were about to introduce me as the first feature of the evening, I informed the hosts of the Purim event (Joe and Jordan) of my raging stupidity and that I was going to need about twenty minutes to fix it. They were copacetic, and put on my pal Andre the Urban Hermitt instead.

As Collette and I walked to the house, I tried Maddy several times on Collette's cell phone. Since it showed up as "Unknown Name" from a different area code, she didn't answer at first. I wouldn't have, either. Finally, she picked up, and was able to locate and email the file to my Gmail account.

There were still plenty of woods to traverse, though. The host of the party seemed...er...well, even at half past it had probably already been a stressful evening, with so many people packed into the narrow hallways of his narrow house, so let's just say that he seemed a smidgen put out when I asked for a favor, before I even specified what the favor was. When I told him that it involved using his printer, I got the distinct impression that I was standing over the fire of his bad mood, adding petrol with a firehose. He said the printer was almost out of ink and that it wouldn't be legible. I said that it didn't have to be even remotely close to perfect, that my standards for legibility are different than most, that I just needed something on the page—not usually the case for readings, as I established several paragraphs above, but, well, beggars and desperate times and all that—and I would be more than willing to pay him for the use of his last bit of ink. He assured me firmly that it was not an option, looking like he wanted nothing more than a nice big flyswatter.

Taos, with whom I haven't had a substantial conversation in what feels like forever but is probably closer to a few months, asked if using a PDA was an option. Sure, why not? I would have settled for reading it off Bazooka Joe wrappers. The bedroom door opened. The host's wife, who looked to me like she was sitting out this particular party, said we could try printing it anyway. The worst that could happen would be that it didn't work.

We downloaded the file from my gmail account, deleted the first twenty pages, and printed it. Nothing. Blank pages. The ink cartridge was, in fact, kaput. The black ink cartridge, though. She switched to the color cartridge and gave it another shot. Lo and behold, there it was, light gray but more than sufficiently readable. For the first time in twenty minutes, I exhaled. (I don't exhale enough.) There were a few bad moments when the printer paused for longer than was expected, but it kept chugging along. I thanked her as prefusely as I could in my somewhat harried state—I oughta send her a fruit basket or some bath salts or something—and headed back out. Collette asked Taos to inform the current DJ that she would be a few minutes late for her set, then accompanied me back to the Purim party.

Andre's set was over, and one of two other hip-hop acts were just beginning. Joe said that he would try to get me in between the two of them, but that I had to be on for no more than fifteen minutes. Though I'd never gotten a chance to time it, my piece probably runs twice that, so I suggested that I could read the first half after this act, then the second half after the second hop-hop act. He thought it sounded like a great idea.

Except the other acts didn't. For reasons never made clear to me, they wanted to go on back to back. My own instincts as a host told me that's a bad idea, but it wasn't up to me, and what's more, I wasn't going to give Joe grief about it. I would go on when it worked best for him. Much like working retail taught me to not to disrespect those behind the counter, organizing and hosting my own shows taught me not to be a prima donna with hosts. Not that I was one to begin with. I'd like to think it isn't in my nature, even though it may be related to other problems I have regarding standing up for myself and getting what I need to be happy, but that's a whole 'nother entry.

I didn't read until nearly midnight. Collette had long since returned to her own gig, and Maura and I spent most of the time in the downstairs lobby, watching people (many of them utter hotties) trickle out as the evening wore on and my own energy level dipped. About fifteen people remained when I started reading, including three very cute girls who told me there was no reason to be nervous, that I was among friends. I assured them that I'm not usually so nervous before a reading, but it had not been one of my better nights. We're Here For You, one of them said, To Feel You. I smiled and murmured to myself, oh, let's not even go there. They left about halfway through.

Barely half a dozen people (plus Maura, Joe, and Jordan) remained when I was done. Everyone who did make it all the way through really enjoyed the piece, and, really, that's better than reading to a crowd who may find spoken word incredibly boring. Who wants to be read to at a party? Okay, yes, there's the required reading of the Megillah, but that's not the same. This is Saturday night in the Clubland, for pete's sake, and following an hour of hip-hop with spoken word is a tad backward. But, like I said before, it's nobody's fault but mine.

For my part, I'm not thrilled with my performance on a technical level. I was a bit tired and stressed, which is never good, and as a result my pacing was off. I've also never read aloud something with so much dialogue. I just didn't have it in me to differentiate between the characters' voices, especially when it was the two female leads, and I suspect it might have gotten confusing at times for the audience. Or not. I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. It's a good piece in and of itself, the reaction was strong—and most important, against all odds, I did it.

Meanwhile, Maddy has strep throat. We were at the Waddell Clinic for four hours on Thursday, mostly waiting. I spent the time hand-editing the story the first sixteen pages of the Purim story, and she was treated that very same day, so the trip was not a waste. After Saturday, I shift gears entirely and start working on the memoir piece for Tina's anthology.

Sunday night, I'm co-hosting the first Bad Movie Night at The Dark Room, along with Jim, Bucky and Lynnee. Should be much fun.

On Monday afternoon, I have an interview for a part-time job at a gay pr0n distributor. Because it's the right thing to do.