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Tuesday, 31 March 2009 (passage) 10:12am I'm on the dole with no prospects, but at least my teeth are clean and shiny. My gums are sore as well, but my dentist (as he put it) really went to town on them, so that's to be expected. I think I'll be spending the rest of the day at home. | ||
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Monday, 30 March 2009 (between song) 9:25am Though I did go to the food pantry because that's where I get most of my food lately, I spent most of yesterday at home putting the final touches on the manuscript. Not final-final—it'll never be final until the last time I look go through the galleys before it goes to the printer—but final enough to send it off to the agent, which I did just now. Meanwhile, my copies of the femme visibilty anthology should be arriving today. Momentum! Bad Movie Night was great last night. I'm getting really tired of Red Dawn, but that's kinda the point, I suppose. In a couple hours Rhiannon's going to reblondify my roots and bangs, I'm working with Raphaela this evening, and after that I'm going to rewatch the Battlestar Galactica finale with Pete and Sarah, because we evidently aren't ready to let it go. 12:49pm My bangs are blonde again. Hire me! | ||
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Sunday, 29 March 2009 (particular dance) 10:18am We had just started to kiss when I began to wake up. That's still farther than I've gotten in a dream or in real life in quite some time. No gym this morning. My regular one is closed, and I don't have time to drive to it or Gold's anyway. Gotta continuing formatting the manuscript—it's a matter of condensing the chapters into one big honkin' Word doc, plus making it sure conforms to standard manuscript guidelines, which it mostly does already—plus getting together the pre-show for this evening's Bad Movie Night, which is our big four-year anniversary. Not to mention the food pantry at noon, and I was hoping to make it to the matinee of The Twilight Zone at three o'clock. Maybe, maybe not. | ||
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Saturday, 28 March 2009 (disequilibrium) 12:31pm At the dentist this morning, I kept thinking of Cesare as Hermey the Elf in I AM SNOWMISER. It helped, some. I have no cavities and my teeth are healthy enough, but I have "generalized gingivitis," which would explain why my gums get redder the closer they get to the teeth. Turns out this appointment was just for X-rays and examination, but my dentist has an opening this Tuesday morning, so I'll be able to come in for a full-on cleaning before my insurance goes away. On the last day of my insurance, to be precise. After the dentist, I straight to the gym, which is the only way it works. My reading material is Peach Friedman's Diary of an Exercise Addict while I'm doing my thirty minutes on the treadmill, and Bruce Moody's Will Work for Food or $: A Memoir from the Roadside when I switch over for thirty minutes to the StairMaster FreeClimber 4400 PT. I've always liked to read stuff I can identify with. Now, by virtue of the fact that it's close to where I parked Sophie and there are available tables, I'm at H Cafe. I'm hand-editing the manuscript today, tomorrow I'll type up the edits, and Monday morning I'll send it off to the agent. During her business hours, y'see. Not only did I order tea, I bought a salad for lunch. All told it was about eight dollars. I used to spend that kind of money at cafes all the time, but it feels so...extravagant now. 5:37pm Back home now. They're having (I'm guessing) a housewarming party upstairs. Many of their friends brought dogs. Large dogs. Some are upstairs, some are in the backyard. The dogs are barking. A lot. So: ambient music up (currently William Basinski's "d|p 6" from The Disintegration Loops IV), white noise machine on, earplugs in and headphones on (mostly Drone Forest, since I have twenty hours of their stuff on my laptop and I love it all). I'd hoped this aural lockdown wouldn't be necessary after the previous tenants left, but that has turned out not to be the case. Since I am institutionalized, I know how to deal. I wish I could do something for Perdita, who occasionally looks above or to the window, startled by the barking, but I can't. To work: typing up the edits from this afternoon. Realistically I won't be able to edit the whole thing and type it up and format it properly by Monday morning, but this is the next best thing . Besides, I got the first nine chapters done, and they needed it the most. 9:21pm Quick break to get up and dance to Mint Royale's "Space Farm." Now, back to work. 11:33pm Done typing up the edits. In addition to fixing sloppy grammar and excising whole sentences and paragraphs to tighten up the narrative—there was a lot of stuff I put in just to see how it worked, and if it didn't work it went away—I've also tried to work a few more jokes and quasi-witticisms into it. I've been bothered for a while by how stilted the manuscript felt to me, how it seemed to lack a sense of humor at times. Hopefully, I've remedied that and made it a more entertaining read. Though I wasn't invited to the GayVNs tonight (Sister Edith informs me that they wanted the company's "important faces" there, which means I might not have been invited even if I did still work there, since I was never, ever important) (there's an irony that an extremely queer company never wanted me to represent them, whereas The Dark Room is run by straight people who are more than happy for me to be its public face), I heard secondhand that I am on the guest list for the afterparty. Vaguely tempting, especially since I don't get out and dance as much as I should, but, no. It's all about priorities, and right now, my main priority is getting the manuscript ready to go. Hard work is no guarantee of success, but I know for damn well that success can't happen without it. | ||
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Friday, 27 March 2009 (liminal) 4:19pm Nurse With Wound was awesome last night. Of course, the chodes who decided to talk loudly through the whole show sat right behind us. That's how these things work. Armed with a referral, I emailed my first query letter to a literary agent (not counting the brief flirtation a couple years back, which I was ill-prepared for). She replied promptly, asking to see the manuscript. I think that qualifies as progress. My first unemployment check arrived today. Shit, as they say, is getting real. When I worked at The Good Guys in '95, one of my coworkers was a published novelist, the first I'd met. In fact, he'd just sold the movie rights to the book. (I've tried over the years to re-establish communication with him to make his dream of the movie appearing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as close to real as Bad Movie Night can, but he doesn't seem to want anything to do with me. So it goes.) It was an important lesson: writing books, even having them published and turned into movies, is not the same thing as being able to pay the rent. You still gotta do what you gotta do to survive. 5:11pm Going to the gym, because that's how I deal. 9:21pm Which is not to suggest that I'm anywhere close to having a book published and turned into a movie. Right now, all I have is an agent interested in reading the book, nothing more. It's the first of many many many steps, and the whole thing can fall apart at any point. And even if the planets do align and it gets published, it's extremely unlikely that anyone would want to film it. (Would I sell the rights if they did? Oh, in a heartbeat.) I don't even have any reason to expect it to be a big seller, or be known outside a certain circles. Still, when I really allow myself to fantasize, I imagine getting nominated for a Lammy, or being asked to read in Litquake, which has thoroughly ignored me thus far. Sales and such are nice, but evidently what I really crave is recognition and respect from my peers. Love me! Love me! And, of course, my previously stated wish for Joan Didion to write about it in The New York Review of Books. But, yeah. Not holding my breath on that one. Still, if it ever gets published, maybe I'll send her a letter. Why not? | ||
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Thursday, 26 March 2009 (little breath) 6:39am Up, out the door, headed gymward. 9:35am Then again, things which didn't fit before are fitting now, including a couple of skirts which I bought at Amvets in Fresno earlier this month, so who the hell knows? Numbers are numbers, sometimes they're applicable and sometimes they aren't. Which doesn't keep my from weighing myself at the gym when nobody's looking, of course. Holding steady around one hundred and ninety. | ||
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Wednesday, 25 March 2009 (maybe 1) 9:11am Back to the gym this morning. Because I need to believe it makes a difference. 12:38pm The femme visibility anthology is now available on Amazon. I have a great distaste for the cover—I find it repulsive and suspect it'll hurt sales—but I wasn't involved in that decision, plus beggars and choosers and all that. 10:35pm Applied for a couple of jobs (Whole Foods and Best Buy, the former of which uses the loathesome Unicru system), talked to a novelist friend who may get me in touch with their literary agent, and have continued with the Great Purge of '09. Took a few bags of stuff to Goodwill, and I have several more to be tossed or recycled. Tomorrow morning I hit the gym again, and tomorrow evening my brother and I go see Nurse With Wound. He was the one who introduced me to them nearly twenty years ago, so it seems only fitting. | ||
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Tuesday, 24 March 2009 (last song) 10:11am Raphaela did my measurements last night. She didn't have the body fat doohickey this time...
...and considering how all my numbers have gone up slightly, it's just as well. I don't think I want to know what my body fat is right now. I'd like to think it's just mismeasurement on her part, except it's way too consistent. Everything has gone back up. Considering how much my exercise schedule took a beating between getting sick and losing my job, it's not too surprising. It sucks, but it's not too surprising. 5:24pm Okay, that was pretty fun. Jim, Andy Wenger and I just taped host segments for KOFY TV20's Retro Night. It'll be airing this Sunday during Bad Movie Night (irony!), though they'll be giving us a DVD of our segments this week. Neat. Before we left, I asked if they had any job openings. They don't—they just had layoffs, like the rest of the universe—but at least I asked. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Monday, 23 March 2009 (boite de nuit) 10:11am No gym this morning, since I got home late and I'm seeing Raphaela tonight. Now, back to cleaning and purging. Always so much more. 12:42pm My operating theory is this: if I start applying to retail positions now, alongside my preferred office jobs and such, then I can concentrate more on the kinds of places where I wouldn't mind working (Borders, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, et cetera) and without the level of desperation that's sure to set in within a few months. The goal is to maintain my current living situation, to be able to pay the rent and buy cat food for Perdita and in general keep up what's really not a very luxurious lifestyle. I'm comfortable, but not extravagant by any means, nor do I care to be. Meanwhile, I need to be able to stick around—I keep having this horrible vision of returning to Fresno, which I really really really don't want to do—since there's so much stuff coming up. Like, doing my next solo piece at The Garage in June, making it the sixth year in a row I've been part of the National Queer Arts Festival. Good thing my teeth have lots of skin. And it may not be strictly solo, either, since the director of the Queer Girl Theater Project said to let her know if I'd like anyone else to be in my next piece. Which is intriguing, because the more I think about it, the more the story I have in mind would work better with one other person, maybe two. Good heavens, it's turning into a thing. Jim's going to be wrapped up with the revival of Emperor Norton at The Dark Room, so Leni's most likely going to direct. Ergo, I need to do what needs to be done so I can stick around. What I do for a living is not who I am as a person. | ||
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Sunday, 22 March 2009 (no hay banda) 7:31am After that dream I just woke up from, I really need to listen to This Mortal Coil's version of "Song to the Siren." I'm not sure why. I just do. I do know I'm tired of my unconscious teasing me. If I'm going to get that close, let it happen, even if it's just a dream. 10:35am Turns out my gym isn't open at nine on Sunday mornings. Who knew? So I ended up at Gold's after all. It doesn't feel right, somehow. 11:12pm I left Bad Movie Night early—I wasn't actually on mic, so I stuck around long enough to do the preshow—went to the Goldies' house, shared a joint and did some nitrous downstairs with Pete and Dr. Hal, then drank wine as we watched the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. A good evening. | ||
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Saturday, 21 March 2009 (a fleeting cameo) 6:05pm Though I've gone every morning since Wednesday, no gym today since I didn't get to bed until three this morning. I only slept for about five hours, so I took a nap this afternoon. Tonight's the final night of AIRspace, so I need my wits about me, inasmuch as such a thing is possible. 9:26 After years of hosting shows with intermissons, I can't believe I never said we'll be right back with more...stuff! until tonight. (Chuck Barris from The Gong Show, y'see.) 11:58pm Overall, the show was uneven, chaotic and fraught with technical problems. Naturally, I had a blast. sometime after midnight I think I committed an Aesop Violation after the show. It's just that the bone in the other dog's mouth looked so yummy, and I was tired of the little splinter left of mine... | ||
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