|
| < 11/21 11/22 11/23 11/24 11/25 11/26 11/27 11/28 11/29 11/30 > |
Sunday, 30 November 2008 (plain talking) sometime after midnight Met a girl at Bad Movie Night (The Black Hole), gave her a lift home, she invited me upstairs, we sat on her couch and talked and drank wine and smoked her hookah until two in the morning, and I went home. A hug goodbye was the extent of our physical contact. I'm raising the chaste, no-affection-potential first date to a godsdamned art form. | ||
 | ||
Saturday, 29 November 2008 (gradual colonization) 8:19pm Went to the gym this morning and did an hour of cardio. According to the scale there, the only one I use, my weight hasn't changed since Tuesday, holding steady at 185. I'm counting that as a victory. (Take that, Thanksgiving!) I drove back home, continued cleaning the Black Light District—it's actually pretty spacious without the clutter—and returned to the gym for Tyrol's afternoon spin class. After class, he asked me what I do, and I told him I'm a writer. (not by trade, I unnecessarily added, but it's my passion.) He asked what kind, I told him I'm a memoirist, and he replied: oh, so you're really wordy? Can't say he's wrong. I returned home, worked a bit more, and am now heading to Sarah Goldies' place to watch Ugly Betty. Pete will be there, but she says that he's very uninterested. Because he's a boy, I guess. | ||
| ||
Friday, 28 November 2008 (inside a twisted cage) 2:53pm I drove home last night, Perdita again sleeping through most of it, and went to Tyrol's noon spin class today. Gotta keep the faith. As I was leaving the gym, he told me that he's really impressed by my progress, that I look much better than I did when I started coming to the gym, that I'm working harder at it than most people do, and to keep it up. I intend to. I've been struck by the housecleaning bug. Sometimes it just hits me. Gonna do that for a while, then I'm going to relax and watching some Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic. The Turkey Day marathon lives! Give or take a day. | ||
| ||
Thursday, 27 November 2008 (scrubbing out) 2:07pm At my mom's place in Fresno, both of us on the couch, feet up, headphones on, engrossed in our laptops. Not a bad way to spend Thanksgiving afternoon, all things considered. I have no shortage of things demanding my immediate attention—editing and memorizing my solo piece for AIRspace, writing and memorizing my dialogue for I AM SNOWMISER, finishing Exchange and Descent, the essay for Sadie's Whorelover anthology, completing the diary entry about weekend before last when so many streams crossed—but there's one more that needs to edge its way to the front burner: applying to an artists' community for next year. The deadlines are approaching soon. There are three on my mind: the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire; the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, Long Island; and the Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks. Applications for the Albee Foundation have to be postmarked between January 1 and March 1, 2009; the MacDowell Colony deadline is January 15, 2009, which might as well be tomorrow; and the Blue Mountain Center is February 1, 2009. There are others, to be sure, some of which are even west of the Rockies, but these three appeal to me in particular. Kirk Read spent this past September at the Albee Foundation—it's why he wasn't in Working for the Weakened—and said it was great. Essentially a big rustic barn-cum-dormitory, Kirk said that Albee delivers the mail himself half the time, which is a weird, neat thought. (The Foundation was started with the proceeds from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and if I did go, I wonder if I'd ever work up the courage to tell Albee about how I reinterpreted a scene from the play so I could kiss a girl. Or would that be inappropriate to tell him? Yeah, probably.) Kirk has also been to and recommends the Blue Mountain Center. He said that for both Albee and Blue Mountain, me being a tranny would an asset on my application. Well, good. It's about godsdamned time it was an asset for something. According to Kirk, the fact I'm a literary organizer is also a plus. I can definitely see that with the MacDowell Colony, which asks in the application for "five important professional achievements, beginning with the most recent, and give dates. For example: completed works, recognitions, publications, performances, exhibitions, etc." I'm pretty sure I can scrounge up five. Three off the top of my head: curating and hosting Wicked Messenger and both iterations of Working for the Weakened; writing and performing a solo piece for The Vagina Monologues (while coming down with pneumonia, no less!); and the "The Slimming Effect" from It's So You. Though Kirk's never been, I'm most interested in the MacDowell Colony for a couple of reasons. First of all, you get your own cabin in the woods, which is beyond awesome. Secondly, Spalding Gray was a resident there while writing Impossible Vacation. He talks about it in Monster in a Box—my favorite of his monologues for sentimental reasons, though I'm emotionally closer to It's a Slippery Slope, becuase I'm not a nice guy, either—and specifically mentions which cabin he was in. So, in the unlikely event that I beat out the thousands of other more reputable applicants, I'm going to ask them if they could maybe possibly put me in the Baetz Studio, please? Whichever I get into, if I do get into one—and I don't expect to, not right away, Kirk had to apply to five before he got accepted, though he's also offered to writer me a letter of recommendation and act as a professional reference, which is going to be a huge helpd—there'll be logistical issues, like getting a month or so off from work, making it out there, and so on. But I'll manage. My mom has agreed to take in Perdita while I'm gone, so that's a start. 5:13pm Oh, and I really have to get a literary agent. Somehow. | ||
| ||
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 (a clearing) 2:50pm Truth be told, the drive wasn't bad at all. Traffic was light, there was only a little rain outside of Los Banos and bit more when I hit Fresno, and best of all, Perdita slept most of the way. She woke up every so often and reminded me that she didn't approve of what we were doing, but otherwise, she was checked out. That's my daughter. The getting-ready-to-go process was a little trickier than I'd originally envisioned. When I park Phoebe in my neighborhood, I'm always conscious of the upstairs neighbor's living room window, as well as the front entryway. Ideally, both the window and entryway are dark, which means that they're either not home, asleep, or both. (Time of day doesn't really matter. I've gotten home at three in the morning and seen the light on in their living room, which means they're up watching teevee. Damnit, when I get home in the middle of the night, the least I can hope for is that they won't be awake.) Last night the window and the entryway were both dark, but I their teevee was on. Huh. Okay. That's a new one, but whatever. As I started walking toward the gate, the entryway light came on. It's a motion sensor, which meant someone was in there. Oh, hell. I have this thing where I don't like to walk past them, so I usually wait until the light goes back off. I walked back to Phoebe and pretended to look through stuff in her trunk, occasionally glancing back at the gate. From my angle, I could see what I figured was the silhouette of the stroller they keep in the entryway. The light finally turned off, then back on a few seconds later. Jesus. Okay. Fine, whatever. I don't have time for this, I need to eat and pack and get Perdita into her carrier and hit the road. Sometime you have to roll the hard six, and if I run into them, I run into them. As I approached, I began to the sense that I wasn't seeing the stroller, and whatever it was, it was moving, and even though I'd already put my earplugs in, I could hear a familiar sound, something I was all but guaranteed to hear if I was in my apartment without the earplugs in—no, really?—seriously? It was a child, probably one of theirs, a boy of no more than four years old. Standing barefoot and mostly underdressed for the weather, he was bawling, saying: i want my mommy! Whooboy. I know the feeling, kid. As I let myself in, I told him that I didn't know where his mother was, which was true. Hell, I didn't even know who his mother was. Then I did the math: (I did the math: they moved in December before last with a one year-old boy and three year-old girl, so, yeah, that was about right. I realized that he must have spotted me from the window and recognized me as the person who lives downstairs, and therefore someone who could possibly help. All he could really tell me was that his mother had gone away and he wanted her to come back. Talking to me seemed to calm him down a little, and for as much as I wanted to have nothing whatsoever do with him or any of this, I also realized that I couldn't in good conscience leave him alone now. He was obviously scared and sad and alone. So I would have to wait with him until his mother came back. Swell. Going inside the Black Light District was no good for several reasons, and the entryway was too cold, especially with his bare feet, so that left going upstairs. Into his house. Christ. A home invasion of the people whom I've had something of a cold war with for the past two years. What could possibly go wrong? Thankfully, nothing. I waited with the kid in their living room as he watched Wall-E (which I'm glad I've already seen, 'cuz, spoilers!), and when his mother and sister arrived about ten mintues later, it was fairly drama-free. I explained to her what happened, she thanked me, and I hightailed it back downstairs. Otherwise, it's been a fairly normal visit thus far. I had lunch with my father, during which conversation perhaps inevitably turned toward recent politics. Seems he was not only an Obama supporter (as evidenced by the copy of The Audacity of Hope on his coffee table), but he also voted against Proposition 8. Gotta say, sometimes I'm proud of my family. Did a bit of shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, getting myself food for the next couple of days. I have no intention of falling off the wagon nutritionally, and the fact that none of my brothers are around means I won't get any static for going vegan. This time, anyway. | ||
| ||
Tuesday, 25 November 2008 (owing one to you) 4:04pm Driving to Fresno tonight. With Perdita. In the rain, by all accounts. Should be lovely. | ||
| ||
Monday, 24 November 2008 (beyond harm) 10:23am Surprisingly good turnout at Bad Movie Night, especially for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Ain't complaining. Did an hour at the gym this morning, and I'm seeing Cassiel this evening, probably for the last time. Until Raphaela goes away again, at least. | ||
| ||
Sunday, 23 November 2008 (lose my mind and dance forever) 9:54am I still have a long, long way to go. I've barely even started. 11:01am I usually take Sunday off, but I lost a couple days this week due to illness, so here I am at the gym. (This is the only way it works.) 1:54pm My long-gestating, problem-child essay "In the Shadow of the Valley" is officially finalized and will be published in Femmethology next March. So there you go. | ||
| ||
Saturday, 22 November 2008 (clean clothes on a dirty body) 6:28pm Didn't make it to Tyrol's spin class this afternoon, but that's okay, since I did an hour of cardio this morning. After that—well, after driving back home because I'd forgotten my boots, and I can't face the rest of the day without my boots—I was at the office for a couple hours, then went over to Sadie's. We'd planned on getting some work done, and we both have plenty on our plates, but it didn't happen. We wound up walking around for a couple hours, through Dolores Park and into the Castro and back, with all the social pitfalls that entails. We didn't see anyone we didn't care to see though we did run into Cesare, and a little later, Puzzling Evidence and KrOB. I adore Sadie, she's my best friend, but I'm also aware that when we're out in public I unintentionally take on another role, a classic archetype: the hot girl's ugly friend. When people come up to us, I tend to disappear from the radar, just the tall tranny who happens to be standing a few inches away, tolerated and little else. And I'm getting hugged less and less these days. Even Cesare, who usually makes a point of hugging me when we both meet and depart, barely acknowledged my presence. KrOB was the only one who hugged me. The thing is, I weighed myself this morning: I'm down to 185. (I'm pretty sure I was around 190 earlier this week, so either my metabolism really kicked in while I was sick, or I lost five pounds of snot. I didn't keep track, but that's sure how it felt.) Plus it just shows, both in the shape of my body (I no longer believe that my midsection is a lost cause, and I will make it go away, through sheer effort and willpower) and how clothes fit. I'm beginning to suspect that the more I get into shape, the more untouchable I become. It's the only theory which fits the facts. Within a year I'll be a leper. 11:45pm We're on Sadie's porch singing Beatles songs, reading the lyrics off my phone. 2008 rules! sometime after midnight I originally planned to get to bed by ten tonight. Only missed it by...um...four hours. And change. (But who's counting?) | ||
| ||
Friday, 21 November 2008 (playing at regret) 3:53pm Back at work today. Still a little congested, but my energy level's back up. No gym, though, not even just an hour on my own. Saving that for Tyrol's spin class tomorrow. | ||
| ||