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Sunday, 11 May 2003 (add it up) 9:16pm On the way to brunch this morning (for it is Sunday, and Mother's Day at that), I saw a billboard with a picture of Mother Teresa and the words "Compassion: Reaching Beyond Yourself. Pass It On." Not to be a literalist, but I don't see how refusing to give painkillers to dying people because suffering (the suffering of poor, at least) is a gift from god qualifies as "compassionate." But, you know, we need our heroes and symbols for impossible ideals (isn't that the basis of xtianity?), even if as idols must be, they're ultimately hollow. Every time I hear the phrase "American Boy"—like when Ritt described taking a picture of Sebastian wearing army fatigues standing in front of a flag and captioning it "An All-American Boy"—I can't help but think of "John Walker's Blues" by Steve Earle. Can't say why. We drove past a marquee reading "God Bless Our Troops." I flipped it off out of habit, but thankfully nobody noticed. Buffets. There are many, many buffets, something Kevin Murphy noted about his home state of Minnesota in his book A Year at the Movies. One restaurant ad I saw claimed to have "comfort food." Incidentally, my comfort food on this trip has been the veggie jerky I bought at the local Asian market back home. Easy way to expose yourself as a city slicker: go into a used bookstore and ask if you need check your bag at the counter. Seeing the somewhat confused look of the guy behind the counter, Ritt explained that I'm from San Francisco. That seemed to explain it. I wonder if that can be used to explain any kind of odd behavior in Nebraska. Another billboard, this time for a local newscast: CLEARLY TO THE POINT. (Capitalization and punctuation verbatim.) What does that mean, exactly? Is "clearly" an adverb describing the manner in which they get to the point, or should it be clear (which is to say, obvious) to the outside observer how they get to the point? The last few days have gone well, all things considered. (I've even gotten some work done on the RE/Search site, though it's a good thing Vale's not big on those particular deadlines.) Tomorrow we drive to Kansas, and Maddy and I are stuck until Sunday in her mother's house, sleeping and hiding in the basement. That's when the pain begins, and my net access becomes very spotty. (There aren't any local dialup numbers for PacBell—the one I've been using here in Omaha charges four cents a minute, which is up from none cents two years ago—and while I can probably use her mother's account from our laptop, she uses it all the time, if I get on early in the morning and late at night it's like sending up a flare that we're awake and before long there'll be knock on her door and she'll glom onto us and suck out our lifeforce.) (Call me hyperbolic if you must, but I speak from experience.) Oh well. At least I'll probably get a new piece for the reading at Adobe next month.
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Saturday, 10 May 2003 (rigors) 7:56pm Going into a Walgreen's to get a longer phone cord for the computer, I had one of those weird moments where I might as well have been in San Francisco; it was identical to the one at Mission and New Montgomery. Then the girl at the counter asked me if I wanted a sack, and I remembered what time zone I was in. I didn't buy anything at the mall yesterday, but I did find a really nice skirt for three bucks in a thrift store today. That seems more appropriate, somehow. Fucking media. And I don't mean "the liberal media," either, because there ain't no such thing. Just, fucking media. Okay, I'll elaborate: in reporting on a protest in Iraq, the Associated Press described banner with the words "Sooner or later US killers we'll kill you." Damn towelheads! Our brave, every-one-a-hero soldiers liberate them, and that's how they thank us? Just goes to show, they hate our freedom! Except that, as the pictures clearly show, the sign actually read "we'll kick you out," not "we'll kill you." Slight difference there, since, as every proud American knows, the deaths of countless foreigners is no big deal but every American death is a tragedy, and even the most veiled threat is a cause for war. (Still haven't found all those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Gosh, they must be around here somewhere...) But no amount of half-assed retractions and corrections will change the damage that's done in the gray matter of the hordes of mouth-breathing, teevee-worshipping flag-wavers. Fuck.
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Friday, 9 May 2003 (wheel of earth) 6:11pm So we spent the afternoon at a mall. Maddy was particularly excited about taking me to Torrid, Hot Topic's plus-size sister store which doesn't exist in our neck of the woods. There was a plaid skirt I really liked, but their smallest size was too big for me, and the similar ones at Hot Topic which fit around my waist aren't long enough for me to be comfortable. (I have issues about too much of my legs above the knees showing. Conventional wisdom says it's sexy, but it makes me feel ill-proportioned.) I had at least two different employees suggest I look into Lip Service, in which both Maddy's experience and my own always runs too small. Still, I'm very glad places like that exist; if I was a not-quite-thin teenage girl right about now, it would surely be one of my favorite stores. Even as a tranny a month and change shy of thirty who could probably stand to gain some weight (though you'll never convince me of that), the vibe was nice. One of the employees was fascinated by our colored fishnets, mine being red and Maddy's being blue. She even asked if she could touch them, and while there might some occasions in which I can imagine myself turning down a request like that, this wasn't one of them. We told her about the brand of fishnets (Leg Avenue, we think) and New York Apparel on Haight in San Francisco. She said she'd talk to her buyer and see if they couldn't start carrying them as well. Yay. Although I got my share of looks in the mall, I don't think I was getting a disproportionate number of stares. I was wearing an Exotic Dancers Union tank top, and I wonder how many of the looks I got were of disapproval for being a stripper, who are of course a lower class of human. Then again, maybe I'd just like to think I could have a stripper's body and I'm giving myself too much credit. Anyway, there were quite a few gothslashpunk kids scattered throughout. My heart goes out to them, it really does. They're fighting the good fight, and in a much tougher environment than even Fresno would be. And I couldn't help notice that both the boys and girls go much heavier on the black eyeliner than out here. Good for them, damnit. Black eyeliner is a sacrament. There was one little gothslashpunkmitraver girl who just killed Maddy and I. In addition to being terribly cute—the dark eyeliner, of course, and we both loved the green in her hair—she was also visibly annoyed with her, shall we say, her very Midwestern-looking mother. The mother finished with a cell phone call, started to put it away, then made another one. "Mom," the girl said in exasperation, "You're always on the phone." Oh, we wanted to adopt her right then and there. I smiled at her and motioned with my head to her mother. She smiled back. A minute or two later her mother finished with the call, and as they walked past us I whispered in the girl's ear, "Yay! She's finally done!" She laughed, though she kept walking and didn't look back. She didn't need to. Teddy bears are a big deal out here. There are entire businesses devoted to them, including places where you can make your own. Twice I've gone to Chinese restaurants and I've yet to encounter steamed rice. When you simply ask for "rice," it's always fried, not steamed. Kinda like the Japanese restaurant in Fresno where "steamed" on the menu actually meant "tempura." It's probably one of those bag/sack regional things. Speaking of Chinese restaurants, I think there's more of them in Omaha than in San Francisco's Chinatown. And there's a whole hell of a lot of them in Chinatown. Thus far, the recent global unpleasantness hasn't been brought up, although the flags outside Ritt and B.D.'s house and on their cars make us a little uncomfortable. We did observe a lone billboard which simply read "No War." It was heartening. The other grownups are watching America's Funniest Home Videos, mercifully with the sound very low. I'm on the laptop with Robert Rich playing just loud enough for me to hear and not loud enough for them. Ritt and B.D.'s two year-old son Sebastian—ultimately the reason for this trip—is on Maddy's lap, paying no attention whatsoever to the teevee. They tell me that except for a certain movie or two, he usually ignores the set altogether. He's a really good kid, and not just for that reason.
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Thursday, 8 May 2003 (take-offs and landings) 1:45pm In an act which can only be described as "prescient" (I've checked, and that really is the only
word), when Maddy and I went out on Tuesday night with Ted and Kelly we wore what what we were planning on wearing while travelling on Wednesday. It was
mainly so we could be officially through with our packing before we went out, though we didn't know at the time that we were going to be staying up all
night anyway. Maddy took a shower before going to the airport, but it felt like entirely too much work to me. (To paraphrase Tristan, I decided to
maintain rather than restore my alien magnificence.) Besides, the opportunity to fly in club mode, to be in the Minneapolis airport while in the same
clothes and makeup as when I was singing "Lithium" twelve hours earlier, was too perverse to pass up. As it was, some people probably thought I'd edged very close; indeed, I must have been quite a sight, a 6' woman with black hair and dark makeup in fishnets (I noticed a couple looks directly at my feet, probably because of the socks inside the fishnets to keep my toes from sticking through), a black half-slip and a Lexington Club tank top with the topless mermaid logo on the back. Rock 'n roll, baby. And never once did any of the security people give me an "Are they really?" second glance. Perhaps they figured that anybody looking the way I did with an F on their license must be for real, and my body must be sufficient non-male since its shape was hard to miss through what I was wearing. The first leg of the flight was from San Francisco to Minneapolis was more than a little hellish. Of course, I never like flying (the airline experience, that is; I have no fear of flying in and of itself) and I always expect it to suck, so it was really no surprise. While the actual length was three hours, in the subjective time was closer to twelve hours, no doubt due to some sort of time dilation effect of flying through the lower hell dimensions. I was very tired, so much so that I couldn't read or write without my eyes involuntarily slipping closed, but I couldn't sleep, either. Even if I wasn't about half a foot too tall—I'm not particularly claustrophobic, and I wonder if tall people tend not to be because we're accustomed to being in relatively cramped places—the constant squealing and chair-kicking of the diapered four year-old behind me was fux0ring any chance of relaxation. Maddy was having a better go of sleeping, but she was also ill and in pain (we later traced it back to obscure contraindications from different medications she's been taking), so I needed to keep an eye on her anyway. We had the inside seats, and as it turns out the guy sitting on the aisle had also been up since Tuesday morning, so he had a pretty good idea how we felt. The first thing I saw in the Minneapolis airport was people watching teevee. Yep, we were officially in the Midwest. Maddy's old friend Regina met us there, so to get to the gate for our connecting flight afterwards we had to go through their security. In spite of being filled with travelers from all directions, airport patronage tends to reflect local custom (the Dallas airport has the highest concentration of cowboy hats I've seen, for example), so I suspect more people than at SFO were scandalized by the mermaid boobage on the back of my shirt. After a delay on the ground of almost an hour, the flight from Minneapolis to Omaha went much smoother, even if it did finally deposit us in Nebraska. Nothing's perfect. B.D. picked us up at the airport, and on the way to their house I saw a grungy, rundown trailer park with no less than five DirecTV dishes. It reminded me of the projects in San Francisco, which are often similarly equipped in spite of the surely limited incomes. Ain't that America. 8:39pm They're watching CSI and ER (it's Must-See Initial Teevee!), and I'm in the next room on the computer. Maddy's sister Ritt assures that I'm not being rude or antisocial, and that she's often elsewhere when B.D. is watching football. This may work out after all.
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Tuesday, 6 May 2003 (lo-fi rhapsody) 7:02am Not that the numbers matter or anything, but I'm down to 170. I would have preferred 160, which is where I was this time last year, but it'll do. It's what my driver's license says, anyway. sometime after midnight When you have to be out of the house by 6am to catch an 8:45am flight, it's smart to go to bed early, or at least by midnight. Which is why we accepted Ted and Kelly's offer of going to karaoke at Annie's, stayed until closing, then went to Sparky's with them. Because, you know, we're all about the smartness. Maddy seems confident that she'll be able to sleep on the plane(s), but something tells me I'm up for the long haul. It's so weird these days to pull an allnighter without acid involved. So the bartender (and apparent proprietor and namesake) Annie told Maddy something interesting. It seems the last time we were there, after the Alternative Press Expo, a friend of the artist who does Emily was present. The next time they went to Annie's the artist came along, and Annie overheard them telling the artist that on the night of APE they saw a girl in the bar who was a dead ringer for Emily. Annie did the math, and concluded he was referring to me. Damn. That one's going way up high on the "compliment" list (much moreso than when The Fidget Queen said Tina the Troubled Teenager looked like me), and not a bad thing to hear before hopping on a plane to the Midwest.
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