Who's the Boss?
By Hiya Swanhuyser

Horehound Stillpoint is a poet, as you might guess from his nom de plume. His work is adamant, poignant, hilarious, and super gay. A sample couplet: "Queer I glitter myself with the shades of a sacred clown/ Normal, I shop at the Gap." In a better world, he wouldn't need to wait tables to make ends meet. But we live in this world, in which so many of us are forced to take shit jobs. Lashing out at this injustice, Sherilyn Connelly hosts Working for the [Weakened], a group reading on the subject of bad jobs, which includes sketch comedy by members of Uphill Both Ways, spoken word by sex activist Lady Monster, and lots more including Mr. Stillpoint. As the organizers say: "Workers of the world, write."

The catharsis begins at 8p.m. as part of the National Queer Arts Festival at the Jon Sims Center, 1519 Mission (at 11th St.), S.F. Admission is $8-15; call 554-or visit www.jonsimsctr.org.

The catharsis reference is only in the print version, but I wish it was in both. Sums up quite nicely what I want the show to be.

10:07pm

Got my blood test results from Kaiser in the mail. (Actually, they've been sitting on my fridge for a while now, but I'm embarrassed about that, so don't tell anyone.) Turns out I'm healthy. Negative for Hep and Syph, yay. Nothing about HIV, but I guess that's a different set of results entirely. Not too worried about it, though. I play safe with Vash, as I did with Ryder and Collette and Maddy and...well, I haven't been at that much risk over the past decade. That needs to change over the next decade. The tightrope needs to get much higher. I'm so sick of being grounded by fear, by both mine and that of others. All of which is to say, I really need to go out and get laid by more and different people.

10:30pm

The Ex liked the Midori Margaritas at Chevy's.

There's nothing wrong with maintaining friendships with ex-girlfriends.

Finally. I said it—and in a public forum where the whole wide world can see it first, because I have the attitude that it's okay.

Saturday afternoon we watched a movie I want to do turn into a play—I plan to present a completed script to the Dark Room folks, in hopes that they'll take it on as an in-house production. I can dream, right? At four, Vash had an audition for a play at a different venue, and after that we headed into The Beast. Our noble intentions had been to both get some work done at Wonderland (especially since my piece for Friday isn't quite ready), but it was such a beautiful evening even by Oakland standards, we wanted to go out and do something. That something ended up sitting in a large dim room, specifically seeing Fight Club at the Parkway. The print was faded and pale but in good shape otherwise, and it was still an opportunity to see it in a theater again, Vash for the first time. (I suspect she was the only person there who hadn't seen it.) As we left, the Rocky Horror kids were queuing up outside. Somewhat tempting, but nah.

Sunday afternoon we mostly kept to The Beast, hitting Telegraph for a lunch at Smart Alec's and yet another Hot Topic run. And why the hell not? Got black nail polish, for the first time in many a moon. My attempts to finally get some work done was stymied by my laptop's accelerated descent into not-workingness. Feh. Oh well. Maddy and I bought it used for a few hundred bucks in ('01? '02?), and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it since, especially recently with the radio show. I enjoyed doing the show, but I kinda wish people didn't associate me with that station anymore.

We returned into the City just late enough to avoid Caranaval and even find parking near The Dark Room. Bad Movie Night was a double feature of Bob Crane guest appearances on seventies teevee shows, specifically Nancy Drew and Quincy. Ouch. It blows my mind to think people used to watch that stuff. It blows my mind to think I used to watch that stuff. The real main event of the evening was the benefit for the Jon Sims Center at the Lexington Club, the one at which Ryder and Vash had agreed to be auctioned off. Except Ryder isn't around anymore, so Vash wound up being the only femme on the block. I guess that's progressive in some ways. She went for a pretty penny, as well she should.

As I say, she had to work this morning, so she was gone by seven. I saw her off, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. That's always dangerous. My subconscious is never kind to me when the sun is up.

4:30pm

heaven was not about him

9:44pm

Just gmail-chatted with Ali, burrowed in for a Sydney winter. She's going to be there for a while. I miss her so much.

In a burst of sadly atypical discipline, I've spent much of today writing my Working for the Weakened piece. It's proving more difficult than I expected. I mean, the research and composition is fairly simple, since it deals with an aspect of my life which I documented fairly well on these pages (which is what they're for) (in addition to gossip and revealing the deepest secrets of other people, of course). What's getting me is the emotion. It was a really difficult time in my life on several levels, and reliving it isn't easy. As I read some of it to Vash this weekend, I started to get teary. But that's the point, I suppose.

I think I'm molting. No doubt I seem increasingly fake to some people, but that's okay. I never claimed to be real.

2:01pm

For the longest time, I didn't understand the concept of the May-December romance. Like George Lucas, I'd mistakenly thought of it as a measurement of time; that is, a short-lived relationship, one which begins in May and ends in December, or stars in October and ends in February, or whatever. The accepted definition, as it turns out, refers to two people of markedly different ages, usually at least a decade. Man. Why is that considered so peculiar that it rate its own special term? What is it about our fear of aging?

Anyway, by my original definition of the term, Ryder and I seem to have been a...well, just a May romance. Very brief. Met at the beginning of this month, and now she's going away for an indefinite period of time. Might see her again before December, might not. I'm guessing not.

Presently, I couldn't find any purple xmas lights in my the otherwise ample supply at home. October's a long way away, but I supect that Spencer's will not disappoint. Speaking of seasonal items, I was told at Hot Topic this weekend that they only get white face powder in around Halloween, and yet, they have black lipstick available all year long. I mean, yay for black lipstick being available—I'd been wanting some for a while now—but I'm not seeing how that's any less of a Halloween item. Grumble grumble.

2:01pm

Anachronistigothed though my workspace may now be, and will only continue to get moreso, I'm still all professional 'n shit, yo. A client just said she "really appreciate your level of editorial detail" in regards to an error I found in their content. Granted, she wasn't speaking directly to me but to the Account Services person who acts as the liaison between me and the clients (I'm the ghost and she's the medium), but still. Go me.

At least I managed to get some shots of what a coworker calls my Jem hair. We did some mall-crawling this weekend (Vash had never been to Hot Topic but was curious, and after all these years I'm still not too proud to shop there), and I picked up a can of purple temporary hairspray from Spencer's. It didn't go on especially purple to begin with, and fades to what I consider to be a rather pleasing pink. I've been wanting to go two-tone with my hair for a while now, and pink appears to be the direction. Vash is more than a little enthusiastic about it, and we picked up a jar of Manic Panic Cotton Candy Pink from Rainbow so we could do it right. Hopefully the girls at the Paul Mitchell School will forgive me.

Monday night was our first time at the Citadel's new location. Upon arriving, we were told that our particular class (the Rope Bondage Peer Workshop) was downstairs, though the restroom was on the far side of the first floor. Vash was fine but I needed to piddle, so as I crossed over to the restroom, I had to walk by another class. Well, what would soon be a class; at that moment, it was just a few people standing around.

The way they looked at me, however, was as if I was some derelict who walked in off the sketchy block of Mission waving its dick around. who are you? are you here for janus? actually, i'm here for the rope— that's downstairs! you can't be up here! Again, they were just standing around talking at this point. Not breaking my stride, I said i'm just going to use the restroom. oh was the uncertain reply, though he dirty, mistrusting look didn't fade, as if it was only a barely acceptable excuse, and I was still violating their energy with my presence. Fine, I don't belong—I'm a perpetual outsider, I get that, I don't really belong anywhere—but they were one step away from the doing the '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers screech-and-point thing. Ah, the e'er-so-inclusive and welcoming kink community of San Francisco.

That said, the rope class was a lot of fun. Vash certainly took to it with no small zest. Ryder was there with her camera and got a few pictures of Vash's handiwork on me, but they aren't quite what the Weekly is looking for.

3:26pm

In the context of my backburnered-but-not-forgotten cover band idea, someone told me recently that me being into Marilyn Manson is "incredibly stereotypical." However it may have been intended, it was accepted as a compliment. Unlike some, I don't have to strive to be disreputable. Just being myself seems to do the job.

4:45pm

And when I'm not being stereotypical (from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 24 - 30, 2006):

The third week of the Dark Room Theater’s tribute to dimensions not only of sight and sound but of mind featured updated, San Francisco–set takes on two classic episodes: “Midnight Sun” and “The Silence.” (Previous weeks took on “The Encounter,” “The Howling Man,” and others; this week’s are “The Jeopardy Room” and “Escape Clause.”) The space is snug, but the company make the most of it, turning the aisle into an extension of the stage when necessary. The downbeat “Midnight Sun” (about a society melting down as the sun draws perilously close to earth) was less engaging than “The Silence,” which follows a chatty man (David Stein, who also directed) as he goes to unusual lengths to win a bet that he can keep his trap shut for an entire year. Between each short ep, live commercials provide comic relief — Hormel’s Sloppy Seconds, anyone? And, of course, the entire show is overseen by Rod Serling (John Harrison), appropriately somber, pithy, and smokin’.

Probably because I didn't work on it at all and kept forgetting to watch it, I only just discovered that my tribble makes an appearance about forty seconds into Episode 39 of The Tim & Roma! Show. It's misidentified as a hamster (a hamster?), then flicked away as though untouchable. That's more metaphoric than I care to contemplate.

Looks like I'll be getting a fair amount of indie press over the next couple of weeks. In addition to the Twilight Zone review (which I'm only about seventy-five percent certain will happen), the SF Weekly is going to preview Working for the Weakened, my somewhat neglected San Francisco in Exile show happening on June 2. In fact, I've been asked to provide a picture of myself to accompany it. As it happens, a couple of photographers have recently expressed interest in shooting me, but the Weekly needs a 300dpi picture by Wednesday, and Maddy took the digital camera when she moved out. Ryder has one, however, and has graciously agreed to bring it along to the Citadel tonight; she's taking a class there along with Vash and I. Some of Vash's pals had also offered up the use of their cameras. Yay for tech-savvy friends.

10:34pm

Getting tied up is exhausting work.

It was a good, if entirely too brief run. The final show was a bit sloppy, mostly regarding sound (I screwed up a major tech element, and the upstairs neighbors were playing loud music), but the audience seemed to enjoy and mostly get it. Someone was taping, which makes me cringe all the more at the thought of the things which went wrong, but that's okay. Hell, the picture might not come out at all considering the relatively low red of the stage light. On Friday, an entertainment writer from one of the local weeklies in the audience. I presume she'll be writing about the show, but I really have no idea. I hope she does, good or bad. It could be a hatchet job so long as my name is spelled correctly.

Now, moving forward.