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Friday, 10 October 2008 (getting it while it's hot) 4:12pm Well, not "definitely," as it turns out. It's going to be four nights spread out over two weeks (probably a Friday-Saturday and then a Wednesday-Thursday), and it sounds like it's going to be a group thing rather than solo. But that's okay, too, especially since he's hinting strongly at me doing a longer solo residency next June. Whether this would be in addition to or instead of the curating a NQAF show is uncertain, though frankly, I don't think I could handle in addition to. I mean, unless that's what it came down to. If I had the opportunity to put together a group multimedia show under the National Queer Arts Festival aegis while also working on a solo performance piece for AIRspace because they both wanted me to do it, then I'd do it. I like being busy and creative and stuff. And either way I'll be doubling up this December, with both the mini-residency at the Garage (half an hour per evening) and my part in Rhiannon's show, which I'm told will be improvised to a large degree. Which is actually kind of a relief. Did an hour at the gym yesterday after work, had Pad Thai for dinner at Herbivore (second time I've been there in as many weeks, which I think means that after several years away—I don't think I'd been since well before Maddy and I broke up—I'm going to be a regular again) (and Bunny insists I simply must try the penne pasta with herb sauce), then went to see The Wicker Man at The Dark Room. Fourth time, I think, some of the cast seemed almost disappointed that I won't be back tonight to see it. (They like having a friendly face in the front row who's generous with their laughter.) Worked for an hour this morning with Raphaela, who was practically bubbling over with pride over how well I'm coming along. The net result is that she keeps ratcheting up the difficulty of the stuff we're doing. Which is good, that's how progress is made, but yikes. I won't be seeing The Wicker Man tonight because I'm going to The Castro Theater for Midnites for Maniacs. Missed it last month because it was on the same night as Working for Weakened. Hey, it happens. Hopefully KrOB will be joining me tonight, but there's never any telling. My first stop, however, is Ike's Place for a vegan sammich for dinner. I've heard good things. It occurs to me that I have no idea when I last had a mocha, or any sort of caffeine. None at all this week, to be sure, and I think I'd already switched to green tea thing last week. I should really keep better track of these things. | ||
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Thursday, 9 October 2008 (across the miles) 3:27pm Looks like I'll definitely be doing a two-night solo AIRspace show at The Garage this December, in addition to doing Rhiannon's show at The Dark Room. December's a good month to be busy. I should find out in the nearish future if my proposal for next year's National Queer Arts Festival has been accepted, and I still haven't heard back about the femme visibility anthology. Can't decide whether or not to ping the editor. | ||
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12:37pm When we arrived at the party on Friday, in a house above a restaurant near 18th and Castro, the first thing we did was peek in the main bedroom. There was really no way of knowing who might attend, and if there were certain people present, I would have to turn and leave. But they weren't, and I while I vaguely recognized a few faces (San Francisco is a small town), there was nobody whom I had any objection to getting nekkid around. Even better, it appeared to be all femmes, mostly genetic girls with a few male-to-female trannies such as myself, and nobody of the butch persuasion. That's my kinda demographic. We then sat in the living room. It was a bigger group than I'd expected, me and Sadie and Sadie's roommate and five other girls. Nobody seemed in too big a rush to join the other room, though. Sadie and I were the first to start taking our clothes off, and only a few of others joined suit. I almost hadn't gone at all. I'd RSVP'd several weeks earlier, but as the date approached I became more and more nervous. Not just because of the "running into an Ex or someone else who might make feel ooky" factor, but because of my standard fears about being a tranny in a women's space, especially an intimate space, which are not generally the most inviting. Then, earlier in the week, Sadie's roommate used the i'll go if you go ploy. Good enough for me. Sadie was going either way, but she was going be distracted with her performance beforehand and plus she was accompanying two other girls. Not that I was with Sadie's roommate now. I was one of her seemingly ever-growing posse, which meant that for all intents and purposes I was on my own. Besides, she didn't seem in any particular rush to get into the room, even saying she wasn't going to take her clothes off beyond her skirt. Indeed, she had a certain ironic detachment from the whole thing which seemed to be shared by everyone in the living room except me and Sadie. Heaven knew I hadn't come this far just to sit in another room and make jokes about the fact that people are in the other room having sex when I could be in there participating, so I stripped down to my panties, feeling grateful to Raphaela that I could do such a thing comfortably. It wouldn't have been so likely three months ago. (Of course, it's as much due to my own dedication, and the fact that (as she puts it) I do my homework. Not all of her clients do. Personally, I don't see the point otherwise. Among other things, I wanna get into shape so I can be comfortable at parties like this, and I'll do what it takes.) I proceeded into the main bedroom. Sadie later commented on how proud she was of me for being the first one of our group to dive in, especially for all my nervousness earlier in the week. It was very warm in the main bedroom, understandable given the energy being expended and the relative lack of circulation. It was also very...pungent, for lack of a better word. Not in a bad way. I supposed it was what a small bedroom with a half dozen girls on or around the king-sized bed in various acts of coitus and/or BDSM smelled like. It was markedly different from the smell on the dancefloor at the EndUp the previous Saturday, a musky smell no doubt native to crowds of sweating, dancing men in denim and leather. Which wasn't a bad smell, oddly enough. I don't generally care for the way boys smell, and there's one boy in particular at the office whom I make a point of not using the restroom after, not because of any potty smell but just because of he leaves behind his consistent boyfunk. But dancing among the leatherboys was not bad at all. It was also a very different from the antiseptic smell of the Power Exchange, where not much actual fucking goes on and the staff keeps the surfaces clean. Everyone was welcoming, though I was still a bit timid, sitting on the ground and watching. Welcoming is not the same as inviting me to actively participate. I was not the only girl wearing panties rather than being completely nekkid and some of the others were genetic girls, so it didn't feel like a cop-out. Still, I wondered if Maggie would have objected to my presence, if she would have argued that I violated what should have been a penis-free zone, in spite of the (genetic girl) host's stated definition of girl as being "anyone who ever self-identifies as such." So much for the birds of flocking together and all that. I'm not sure if Maggie's presence would have been a deal-breaker for me or not. As it was, I didn't feel any sense of competition with the other trannies in the room like I may have with Maggie, especially given Maggie's sense of entitlement. (Which I'd argue is much stronger than my own sense of entitlement, since hers is bolstered by her surgery.) The host began spanking a girl named Akima, who had purple hair and an unidentifiable accent. As the spanking turned to fucking, Sadie spoke brusquely (one of her specialties) and held Akima's hair with one hand while scratched her back with the other. I asked Akima—who, by virtue of the limited space on the floor, was pretty much laying across my lap as it was—if she could join in with the backscratching with the other. She said: oh, yes, please do. And so it was that for the second time in as many weekends, I found myself in the role of Gangbang Backscratcher. The other had been at The Power Exchange the previous weekend, as Rhonda and and another of the Regulars went to town on an extremely willing girl. Everyone remained clothed so it was functionally a dryhump, but still. I had clipped my nails a few days before, so there wasn't much I could do scratch-wise. Now, a week later at the party, they were a bit longer and sharper. Maybe I should return to my old nail habit: keeping the thumb, pinky and index finger of my left hand long and sharp, and the rest of them short and dull. It served me well until this year's drought began. This was more intimate than the last time, and I enjoyed it more, enjoyed Akima more. As I took over the back duties, Sadie focused her free hand on giving Akima something to suck. And there was biting. Lots of biting. Later, our group and Akima were in the second, considerably less warm bedroom. (Sadie's roommate had long since left, evidently not having found the party to her tastes.) We were sitting in a circle on the bed, talking, when the host came in and stood behind me. She put her arms around my shoulders. I put my hand on her hand and squeezed, closing my eyes, leaning into it. Before too long she was lying on the bed in the middle of us, roles reversed, Akima fucking the host instead of the other way around, with Sadie holding the host's hair. The others of us were biting and scratching, though I eventually turned my attention to Akima, more of whom was closer and who was more immediately enticing. I kissed and nuzzled and scratched her from behind, making sure not to block the arc of her arm, since her hand was inside the host. (Every so often, the host would say something like: oh, wait...cervix. a little to the left, please? Akima would shift her hand almost imperceptibly, and the host would say: that's better. go for it.) I felt like something of a bottomfeeder, but not for the first time, and I've always been okay with it. At least I'm eating. And someday I'll have to title a book Bottomfeeder. Sounds like an essay collection. On the wall of that particular bedroom were two handwritten signs next to each other:
[IMPLIED] [CONSENT]
That was as may be, but "no" would still mean "no," and it didn't change the fact that one of my greatest fears is attempting to do something that someone didn't want me to do. It goes back to that old feeling of having a body which is far bigger than it needs to be, frequently leading to me being mistaken for male. But Akima was all for what I was doing, reacting positively, purring and occasionally turning back and smiling. My gods, Akima's smell! I'd forgotten how wonderful and intoxicating a girl can smell when she's sweating, especially from sex. It wasn't something I became conscious of until Vash, and moreso later on with Ripley. (I don't really remember what Collette smelled like mid-coit—it's possible she successfully covered it with perfumes or deodorants, as self-conscious of her natural scent as she was of her natural skin—and the question almost doesn't apply to Maddy or The First.) She was hardly the only girl in the room, but I knew it was her I was smelling, and I could taste her. Ah, pheromones. I'm a sucker for pheromones. It was pushing midnight when Sadie and I decided to split a cab into the Mission, where she lives and where I'd parked Phoebe earlier. Judging from the beautiful view out the window into The Castro, we'd missed the worst of the promised rain. Before I got dressed, I saw Akima in the living room. She'd put a few clothes on, but she said she was just cold and wasn't going to leave just yet. I asked if I could kiss her (still always the scariest thing for me to ask, perhaps because it reveals me as needy and vulnerable), and she smiled broadly and said yes. It was somewhere a long kiss and a short make-out, intense and delicious, the first of anything of the sort since the Ecstasy-fueled nitrous kisses with Nina back in April. I don't know that I want a girlfriend again (so I say at this moment, all while hoping the girl that I'm crushed out on will reciprocate even though I know she won't, but if she does, what then? would I leap in? yes, I think I would, since I still believe it's better to regret something you did than something you didn't do), but I really do need just a little spark like that now and again, just a taste. Akima told me that something I'd done back in the bedroom had really been turning her on, and I replied that we'd have to remember it for next time. She laughed and agreed. But, see, I don't believe in next time. There's only ever this time, and that's why it's so important that it's remembered. | ||
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Tuesday, 7 October 2008 (on the other side) 9:57am The final sentence of the "Acknowledgments" section on the last page of Rachel Sontag's House Rules, after thanking her friends and family: I know this subject matter is personal, I just didn't know how to live without sharing it.Exactly. I finished it last night while on the treadmill after working with Raphaela, and moved on to Frances Kuffel's Passing For Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding Myself. I'm liking it so far, but I suspect that I when I go to the gym this afternoon, I'll start re-reading Falling Into Manholes. Because, you know. I weighed myself this morning. In all honesty, I've been doing it these past few months more out of curiosity than as any sort of yardstick, and I'm not troubled that my weight has stayed around 205. I can tell by how I look and feel and how clothes fit that I'm getting into shape. I don't remember exactly when I weighed myself last. Possibly last week. Anyway, the scale now says I'm around 196. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that not eating after sevenish and cutting out animal products has a lot to do with it. I'm now eating fruit for breakfast, especially blueberries and kiwi berries, plus a banana and/or cherry tomatoes. All organic and from Rainbow or some equivalent thereof, because if I'm going to be a damned dirty hippie, I might as well do it right. My dislike of fruit is legendary in some circles, but I'm getting over it. Lunch is tending to be whole-grain bread with tahini nut butter, and tomatoes or other veggie of some kind. Snackage during the day comes in the form of various nuttage. Those meals are easy enough to control, since I tend to be at the office for them. Dinner, per usual, is a bit trickier, especially the whole not-eating-late thing. It's not a hard and fast rule, obviously, and there'll be times when it just isn't practical and that's okay. But last night worked out (is that a pun? I don't mean it to be) pretty well, even though I didn't have a proper dinner. I didn't feel especially hungry when I went to bed, and I was fine when I woke up and went straight to the gym. Damned if the berries and such taste damned good this morning, though. And exercise-wise, I don't intend to keep this pace up forever. Just...until I don't feel I need to anymore. Whenever that is. 7:53pm Still haven't heard whether I got into the femme visibility anthology. I figure I'll wait until Thursday before I ping the editor. Did my hour of cardio this afternoon, my second hour today, got vegan Pad Thai from Basil, and then got some writing done. As my father used to say, hooray for our side. | ||
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Monday, 6 October 2008 (escape velocity) 3:37pm It wasn't until I standing in my shower this morning this morning that I realized I must have gotten some sleep last night, even though it didn't feel like it. I was thinking about how there had been no good reason for me not to be able to sleep, I hadn't eaten since seven or had anything stimulating since the Dragonwell Tea at two in the afternoon (the closest thing Peet's had to an organic decaf green tea), I'd masturbated and read, I'd turned the heater off and on, there was that business with the dead girl, and— Oh, hell. I suddenly remembered a fairly vivid nightmare, one involving a ghost, the sort of classicist material that normally doesn't enter my mind at all. Still, if I reached R.E.M. sleep, then I must have gotten some rest. And some rest is better than none, especially since I'm working with Raphaela tonight. The annoying part is that the nightmare had a very strong Japanese horror element to it, which means it was probably at least partially caused by that evening's Bad Movie Night feature, the American remake The Ring Two, which I found neither scary nor especially entertaining. I choose to believe that my brain culled from the original Japanese movies Ringu and Ju-On and probably A Tale of Two Sisters, which is South Korean rather than Japanese but close enough stylistically. Either way, I would have preferred to have just gotten some decent sleep. 9:58pm Thanks to a Key Lime Pie Larabar, a Bolthouse Farms Vedge drink and my own stubbornness, I managed to make it through an hour with Raphaela and another hour of cardio this evening in spite of my baseline exhaustion. Had a banana afterward. Sleep now, please? | ||
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Sunday, 5 October 2008 (living well is the best revenge) 2:15pm Another of the readers at Litquake yesterday was Savannah Knoop, who was revealed a couple years back as the actual writer of the JT Leroy books. She read from her new memoir about the whole foofaraw, Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy. After I spoke to the person I'd come to see (who wrote me that night), I introduced myself to Savannah and told her I'd been in the Harold's End reading at City Lights in 2004. I made it clear I was happy to meet her, and that I wasn't angry about the hoax, becuase it's true, I never was, I'm still proud to have played a small role, and whatever the pretenses, I greatly enjoyed reading the chapter aloud, and at City frackin' Lights. (If my career were to grind to a halt tomorrow, I'd still be proud of all the really cool stuff I've been lucky enough to do.) Savannah said she remembered me. Now that I think about it, we spoke at the City Lights show—Savannah came up to me afterward and said that she was JT's roommate and that she really liked my reading. She said as much again the following day in an email. After Litquake, I made my way back to the office (where I'd originally gone after doing an hour at the gym that morning), then headed into the Mission. Had the seitan sammich at Jay's Cheesesteak, then watched The Wicker Man from the front row at The Dark Room. From there I went to Debaser, a "90s alternative dance party" at the Knockout. I danced for about an hour, until the dancefloor started to fill up with hipsters wearing ironic flannel shirts and carrying a beer. Big pet peeve of mine, dancing while holding a beer. If you're going to dance, put down the fracking booze, unless you're trying to tell the world that you have to be drunk to let yourself go. Which is probably the case with a lot of people. My next destination was The Power Exchange. It was pushing midnight, and my energy level was doing pretty well considering that I hadn't eaten since seven. It was something Raphaela had suggested, not eating after seven, and which I've heard many times before. Heaven knows pre-bed munching is a big vice of mine, and I'm willing to give it up, to see what happens. I also went shopping at Rainbow this morning, getting organic/natural hygiene products to replace the Safeway-bought stuff I've been using, as well as fruits and nuts and such for this week, much of which was suggested by Skinny Bitch, and backed up by both Raphaela and Bunny, who are both way ahead of me. Again, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it all the way. A change would do me good. No more Velvet Lasagnas, and to be honest, I don't think I'll miss them. Anyway, I wasn't at The Power Exchange very long. I was mostly there to see friends. Rode on the Cross for a little while with Hal, and told Rhonda all about the party the night before, since it's the sort of story she loves. Almost all the Regulars were in attendance, and it had the peculiar feeling of being inside my own book. As I was leaving, I joked with Artwhore that I'd shown up just to make an appearance, to make sure I won't be forgotten. He replied: oh, don't worry about that. you won't be forgotten. Awwww. Between today and yesterday, I've moved moved most of my stuff across the office into a recently vacated workspace. Unlike my old space, it's on a solid, level concrete floor as opposed to a slope of some sort of irregular stone. When I go back and forth between the two of them, standing in one space and then the other, I can tell the difference. My old desk feels like the Mystery Spot or something. In the plus column, my old space doesn't get much direct sunlight (one of the reasons why Sister Edith, who did the floorplan, put me there), it has some relative angular privacy, and I was between my two best friends in the office, Sister Edith and Tor. Now I'm between two people who are simply coworkers, but it's a necessary sacrifice. At least I'm now across from Sister Edith as opposed to, say, my archnemesis. (Who's hardly ever in the office anymore these days. Sherilyn, FTW!) So, more sunlight, less privacy and Tor and I can't talk to each other directly anymore, but on the other hand, I've been able to pound out this diary entry turned to the left on my laptop, which means I'm comfortable sitting here. And that's really damned important. I haven't worked on the book since mid-August, and while I don't feel that time's been wasted per se—I've been working pretty hard, if I do say so myself—I'm itching to get back on the writing horse. Oh, yeah: still nothing about the anthology. It's reasonable enough that I wouldn't hear anything over the weekend. sometime after midnight Feh. There's no good reason physically or emotionally that I can't get to sleep. I just...can't. | ||
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Saturday, 4 October 2008 (tumbling dice) 5:58pm Mission accomplished. Went to Litquake, listened to her read, had her sign my copy of the book, and asked if she'd like to get coffee sometime—all with my hands shaking and my voice quivering. (Last night at the Pirate's Pleasure Party at Good Vibrations, where Sadie performed before we went to the all-girl party, a go-go dancer nervously told me she saw me read at Femina Potens and really liked it, and had been thinking about it ever since. I haven't read there since November 2006, so evidently I made an impression on her. The fact that I'm occasionally treated like a rock star makes me no less nervous or bashful when I'm approaching someone I admire, especially when I'm crushed out on them. That's probably healthy.) She said she'd love to get coffee sometime, and to email her next week. We talked a little bit about timing and kismet and such, and that was that. | ||
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Friday, 3 October 2008 (backing down a notch) 4:45pm Did an hour yesterday morning and another hour after work, and from there I went to The Dark Room for the opening night of The Wicker Man. It's the first play there in a while in which I haven't been a presence during the rehearsals. Things change. Worked with Raphaela for an hour this morning, which is more than enough exercise for one day. Still haven't heard back about the anthology. I figure I'll wait until next week before I start getting all high maintenance about it. Tonight, I'm going with Sadie's roommate to an all-girl play party (and Sadie herself will eventually arrive). I have no expectations. sometime after midnight An excellent night at the party. next time. Do any other two words in the English langauge hold such promise, and so much potential heartbreak? | ||
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Thursday, 2 October 2008 (always another door) 1:12pm Saw Hayley on Tuesday night, for the first time since June of last year. I went into her store, which I've mostly avoided in the meantime, and there she was in her usual place. I considered turning around and leaving but it was obvious that she'd seen me, too, and what would the point have been? We went on exactly two dates over a year ago. That's not exactly a lot of emotional baggage. We talked for a few minutes. It was nice, and I still found her to be the hottest girl in the room, but it was also fairly obvious that we aren't going to be hooking up again, either. I doubt it would have worked. In my limited experience, it never does. Did an hour of cardio yesterday morning, and then Tyrol's spin class in the evening. Afterward, he told me that I've been doing a lot better lately—my form has improved (evidently my legs were "froggy" when I first started coming to class), and to keep up the good work. Yay! Positive reinforcement! I won't be at his class this Saturday, though. I'm planning on going to a Litquake reading to meet a writer whom I'm slightly crushed out on. It was actually tough to make that decision, though, whether it was a good enough reason to miss the Saturday class that I've only been to once before. It means my priorities are either right where they should be, or they're completely screwed up. It's hard to tell most of the time. Meanwhile, I still haven't heard back about the anthology. The editor sent out a mass email saying that she's in the process of informing people whether they're in. I'll find out when I find out, and I'm either in or I'm not. | ||
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Wednesday, 1 October 2008 (shorter days, darker mornings) 9:40am The final cuts for the femme visibility anthology are supposed to be announced today. They haven't been yet, and I'm doing a lousy job of not getting anxious about it. There's no point, obviously. I'll get in or I won't. And if I don't, it's okay. Rejection is part of the game, and nothing personal. As Willie Nelson (and no doubt countless others before him) said: well, you can't lose 'em all. Did an hour last night, finishing up Loose Girl and moving on to Rachel Sontag's House Rules: A Memoir. Turns out it isn't a memoir by child of Susan Sontag (like Swimming in a Sea of Death), but rather a remembrance of an abusive father, not unlike A Wolf at the Table. As is usually the case, certain passages leap out at me. I was cast as a tree in the high school's production of The Wiz. It was nearly impossible to get rejected from the annual musical. It was the play for nonactors. I had no speaking part but was to appear on stage for a long dance choreographed to personify a tornado. I'd given up on getting "in" with the theater crowd, but at least rehearsals would get me out of the house nearly every afternoon for three straight months.My father was never abusive, mind you. Far from it. Neither of my parents were ever abusive. A recurring theme in the memoirs I've been plowing through lately is the fact that the writer is, in fact, a writer—frequently their career is discussed, book readings and tours are described, that sort of thing. Often the book itself is part of the story, either from the beginning (as in Not Buying It or Helping Me Help Myself, which are both about year-long financial and/or social experiments), or the decision to write the book comes up towards the last third as part of a healing process (like Falling Into Manholes). It's reassuring, since on the one hand I don't want Exchange and Descent to become too meta, but on the other hand, my writing does figure into the events of the story. There's really no way to be honest about the events in the first act without discussing the backlash against me and my writing before and after the breakup with Maddy, and deciding to write the book does spur events in the third act. In this case, I can use the everybody else is doing it, so why can't i? justification. It also builds on what's established (or what will be established once they're written) in Landing on Water and Shelter from the Storm. I'm not sure exactly when it was—probably within a year of us breaking up—but Maddy once told me that nobody else will ever want to be with me because nobody wants to be written about. (Her ex-husband used to play the nobody else will ever want to be with you because you're _________ headgame on her, but this was different.) (I never said anything like that to her, nor would I to somebody I was in a relationship with, any more than I would curse at them. But that's me.) It's a bit of a logical fallacy when one considers the memoirists who are not only in relationships, but write about it—Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea and Spalding Gray immediately come to mind for me. Not all of those relationships lasted (and Spalding later killed himself), but it would be a logical fallacy to suggest that the ones which did disintegrate would have stayed together if not for the writer's writing. Four words: It's a Slippery Slope. | ||
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