The battle? Lost. The war? Not by a long shot. I've lived in this apartment for twelve years this very month. They don't know what territorial means.

Going to Sadie's college graduation this afternoon, and Vash and I are going to see Crystal Daze this evening. This is my version of being a grown-up.

6:10pm

The reason I was at the Sunset Cafe rather than at the office on Friday was the big rescheduled Angel Island company excursion. The weather was gorgeous, so I'm sure it was a nice trip for those who went, but I just couldn't. Fun Day, 1999. Not a lot of stuff makes me triggery (ha!), but I refuse to repeat that particular pattern. I'll tempt fate in a lot of ways, but not that.

Hayley and I had planned on getting together Thursday night, but she had to cancel due to some heavy household trauma. (There's no telling when things will equalize and when I'll see her again. Sometimes business goes unfinished.) There were other possibilies, including a very tempting date offer from Johanna, but I decided to stick with my original Plan B, going to a play with Sadie. I kinda needed to be with a platonic capital-F Friend, someone who knew exactly where I was at and whom I could tell anything that flitted through my brain, and and that was Sadie. The play was In Spite of Everything, written and performed by a slam poetry group called The Suicide Kings. Absolutely frackin' brilliant, it was.

It was while we were walking to the theater that the derelicts made the charming comment about not being able to tell if I was a girl. Sadie suggested I just ignore that sort of thing, but rather than ignore, I collect. It feels like the only sure way to stay sane. It did get me to thinking that squidification is highly unlikely to help matters, to make me pass more. If my hair looks the slightest bit not-real, people assume that it isn't real and thus it follows that I'm a boy, like how after I get my roots reblondified I get called "he" and "sir" a lot more and they occasionally compliment on my wig.

The squid is not likely to look real, nor is it especially intended to, and that will surely tip the scales which are already teetering like the cabin in The Gold Rush because of my size and/or my voice. Such is life, c'est la vie, so be it and all that, I'm doing it anyway. I'm growing so damn tired of fretting, and while I know I'll never stop fretting over it, this is life, damned life, the only one I get and if there's a prime it's gotta be this very moment, so I might as well make the most of it and look how I want to, and wasn't that the damned point in the first place? Sadie joked that I'm mostly human until squidification, and she wasn't entirely wrong, so what then? Even more of an alien, or more likely a mechanical animal, recently rusted. (There's a reason the poster has lasted in my living room from 1999 through now.) I'm also finding the tattoo urge returning, maybe just the I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream code or maybe a bit more, maybe a sleeve of henna from Soul Patch to see how it feels. Like I said before the last one ended, moulting is likely before this year ends.

Would I feel differently if I was small and lithe and relatively undectectable, would I be happy looking more quote normal unquote? Or would I have done all this long ago since I wouldn't have been so stymied by the never-resolvable equation of what I can and can't do to be read as female and would have followed my role model Pandora that much closer? Don't know, don't really care.

10:35pm

From the beginning, I knew she would have a unique hold on my heart, and would be able to break it like nobody else.

10:54pm

I've said it before and i'll say it again: tear-streaked eyeliner is TEH HAWT.

sometime after midnight

In Oakland, and I only had to cross a few boundaries to get here.

let go. Why is that so difficult to abide by?

Subject: Arbitration, please.
I have a bicycle which I've been keeping in the garage because of the way direct exposure to salt air eats away at the chains. I came home last night to find a note taped to my door asking me to move it out of the garage because they need the space. Here's my thing: between A) the washer and/or dryer seem to be constantly occupied, and B) not being able to sleep past eight on weekend mornings because of the yelling and screaming and thumping coming from the childrens' bedroom directly above mine (and the overall noise level the rest of the time), I feel like the relatively small amount of space that my bike occupies in the garage isn't too much to ask for.

It's the first time I've complained about the giraffe since shortly after it first moved during last year's dark, awful, second-worst-ever xmas eve ever. I've wanted to, but this is one of those battles which I have to be very picky about. I know that for the next few years, unless one of us decides to move away, there's nothing I can do to make the noise stop. Impermanence.

He just wrote back and said that he emailed them and is waiting for a response, and how would I feel about the bike hanging in the garage? I told him that would be fine.

4:37pm

She can't...but she wants to. And that's the next best thing.

5:06pm

Frack off, N-Judah! The disembodied god voice on the 71 line will love me!

sometime after midnight

Heard from a group of derelicts as Sadie and I walked down Taylor towards the Exit Theater, her closer to the curb: i know the one on the outside is a girl, but i ain't so sure about the other one...

I made a point of getting to the meeting early enough to find a seat near a power outlet so I could use my laptop. Because I'm that damaged.

7:26pm

Wow. Holy frackin' shit. Duh-rama in the meeting. Everything I've heard is true. Now, where's the coke? Gypped, once again.

8:07pm

Seriously. It's like a dirty laundry exhibition. It's only annoying because I want to get out of here. The storm at the heart of the Beast.

8:53pm

The bowels of the Beast, to be precise. Processing to the nth degree. The real fun part is, I'm sitting literally between the primary combatants. The volleys are zooming back and forth in front of me. So I'm treating it like a tennis game, watching them go back and forth, not pretending it isn't happening. Might as well.

10:24pm

The feeling of want is seldom so strong.

Went to Aunt Charlie's Lounge with Rimma to research the Eros article, and now I'm at Sadie's, typing up my notes. I've been trying to curtail my caffeine consumption, and damn, I'm feeling it.

sometime after midnight

I want what's bad for me, but I want it on my terms, and I know it doesn't work that way. (gimme danger, little stranger)

Meanwhile, the penis piece has a title: "vestri pen0r quod vos." I'm obviously fond of titles which are easy to spell and pronounce.

Last night's Queer Open Mic was a good one. Vash and I had planned on going to see Uphill Both Ways at The Dark Room afterward, but we were both way too tired, so we returned to the Black Light District and crashed. It was the final night of this particular show and the first time I've missed an entire Uphill Both Ways run since I met them in 2003, but getting more than four horus of sleep was so very necessary. Vash had planned to head back to Oakland early this morning and for me to possibly join her in the afternoon, but as these plans often will, it mutated into both of us heading east around noon. Which was fine by me.

10:10pm

In Oakland with Vash, for real, at Wonderland. We're both working, her on art project that's opening at Glamarama, and me on "vestri pen0r quod vos." She was kind enough to create a really nice little workspace for me, a table in her kitchen which I know required quite a lot of cleaning. It's perfect, and feels like just about the sweetest thing anyone's ever done. I expect I'll be getting a lot accomplished here in the future.

Speaking of things falling through, I woke up this morning to discover that Tribe 8 will not be playing the Tranny Stage after all. Lynnee will instead be doing solo stuff, and we're still getting the writeup in the Pride magazine, just with a different focus. But it's still publicity, which I guess is what matters.

I picked up my date Hayley from her work last night at nine. We went to Divas, which seemed as good a place as any, given the lack of a cover charge or yuppies and, well, quite frankly, it's not the Lex. Around half past eleven she said she wanted to meet Perdita, so we returned to the Black Light District. I'd cleaned and vacuumed that afternoon on what felt like the extremely off-off-off-chance that we'd end up there. Good thing I did. She met Perdita, marveled at how her skin looked under the blacklights in my bedroom (Hayley's skin, not Perdita), and we enjoyed ourselves a great deal. I confessed that I've for a while now I've both had a crush on her and have wanted to be her when I grow up, and she said that when she used to see me coming into her store she would often think to herself, that's what i'd look like if i was a tranny. I gave her a lift back to her place around half past two. She offered to take a cab, but, no, she'd probably still be waiting for them to show up. We decided that, yes, we'd like to see each other again.

In bed by three, back up around seven, not exactly rested but close enough for government work. I tried to doze on the train, but it just wasn't happening. Had my eyes closed for a good long while, at least. When I opened them around Van Ness, I saw Hayley sitting across the aisle, her back to me, but certainly her, the same build and two-tone hair in braided pigtails. Given where she lived and where she worked, it stood to reason she'd use the same muni line. Had she not noticed me when she got on the train? Distinctly possible. Besides, I'd appeared to be asleep. As I got off the train at Powell, I started to say hello, then realized it wasn't her at all. Just someone with almost the exact same fashion sense, minus some tattoos and piercings. Her doppelgänger. I have no idea what the universe is trying to tell me.