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Wednesday, 10 September 2008 (death is the road to awe) 10:27am To paraphrase Rhiannon: workout fail! I did less than my usual hour this morning, more like forty minutes. Which isn't bad at all, and my excuse is that the machinery was conspiring against me. The treadmill was one of the ones which kept changing its speed, either dropping down to 2.0mph or suddenly increasing to 6.0mph. It's jarring either way—my usual pace is 3.5—and the latter is downright dangerous. The crosstrainer thingy then decided that it didn't want to stay on the "Fat Burn" mode, switching itself to Manual every few minutes, even though I kept my hands on the heart-rate sensors and everything. After ten minutes of that, I decided it was a sign to cut things short. What the hell. Less than an hour won't kill me, and I'm still doing pretty well overall. Also jarring is the fact that my weight is staying the same, hovering just over two hundred All-American pounds. Everyone with body issues has heard the mantra muscle weighs more than fat more than once, and it's meant to get us to not be so focused on numbers. I understand it intellectually—I also understand that a pound of anything weighs the same as a pound of anything else, it's more a question of density per volume, that lean muscle mass can take up less space than fat yet weigh more—but there's still a leap of faith required, too, that "looking better" is not synonymous with "losing weight," since that's the only thing that's worked in the past. All is vanity, and vanity is all I am. My body is changing, and I'm getting the results that I want (i.e. fitting into clothes I haven't been fit into for a while), so at this point, I'm mostly just weighing myself out of morbid curiosity. (Hey, I was in that!) I've got a long way to go, though. A long way. A girl in the locker room this morning asked me if I could give her a quarter to use one of the paid lockers, since she forgot her regular lock. I happened to have a few rattling around in my bag, and as I dug it out I ruminated on how Maggie would feel about me being there at all. This girl saw me as a potentially friendly stranger, not as an intruder or an interloper, someone looking to foul up her nest with my evil penis. Granted, I keep it to myself, only getting nekkid in the shower behind the curtain. Still, would she raise an alarm, since my presence would devalue the surgical privilege she paid so much for and her right to be in penis-free zones? Which is, by definition, a different concept entirely than a women-only zone. If the penis is the yardstick (pardon the disgusting imagery), then the question of gender becomes irrelevant. It's all quite moot, since I don't expect her to ever set foot in that particular gym. (Or any, based on how her body's looked these past few years. Hey, she's got her vagina, so it's all good.) I suppose she might be at the women-only play party that I'm going to with Sadie next month—with Sadie as a friend, not as a lover, because she's my sister and I'm not a big fan of incest—the hostess of which is a genetic girl who believes very strongly in inclusion and does not tolerate discrimination against trannies based on genitals. I can't deny that it would be gratifying to see Maggie smacked down if she tried to raise a fuss about me being a bird of the wrong feather. My vanity is matched only by my pettiness. I went to the gym again last night, my second hour of the day. Afterward I drove to the Target in Daly City, for two reasons: to prove to myself that I could do something other than just go home and eat and crash after an evening workout, and because I was desperately in need of a new cardigan. The one I've been wearing is faded and pulled and doesn't fit right and (the dealbreaker) has a really gnarly rip on the side, lending me a look of rattiness which I simply can't abide. I can handle being dressed down, and my clothes don't have to be perfect, but a big hole in my sweater? Nope. That will not do. As always, I was at the mercy of whatever Target's sweatshops are churning out at any given time (and there's nowhere else I could possibly go than Target, right? Right), but thanks to the impending season change they've gotten into the right kind of groove. After poking around a bit, I managed to find an XXL Juniors Mossimo Supply Company Deep Plum Boyfriend Cardigan which was both big enough and long enough and had long sleeves, which most didn't. I require long sleeves, and these are amongst those very rare sleeves that actually cover my wrist. But, really? "Boyfriend?" Did it have to have the word "boyfriend" in the name? It's not like the word is stitched on the back like a letterman jacket or anything, but still. Thank you, Mossimo, for the reminder of the inherently male nature of clothes that fit me. Honestly, you shouldn't have. On the plus side, "Deep Plum" is the best color name ever, and while I would have gotten a black one if they'd had it in my size, it's a nice shade and it matches the purple stripeys I'm wearing today for the first time in months. If I'm going to branch out into colors, I could do worse. Tonight's the SF Fringe show at The Garage. The one I'm in, anyway, since it's a weeklong series. I was going to read my essay from It's So You, which I've never read in public in its entirety, but even with fifteen minutes to kill it's still too long. Instead, I'm going to read excerpts from "In the Shadow of the Valley," which at well over a year old—it's weird to think of how much I worked on it in early 2007, when everything was different—remains in limbo regarding its inclusion in the femme visibility anthology. Final cuts will be announced on October 1, pushed back from September 1 for a very good reason. | ||
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Tuesday, 9 September 2008 (terminal beach) 10:51am Last week at the gym I finished Swimming in a Sea of Death, not so much because I was enjoying it but because it felt almost disrespectful to Susan Sontag's memory not to finish her son's dark, painful memoir about her dark, painful death. From there I moved on to Jancee Dunn's But Enough about Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous, which I'd also picked up not knowing what it was about. It was a much more enjoyable read, and certain parts of the author's life resonated with me. "Look, I've decided to embrace being single, so I don't need cheering up," I said, settling down next to him. I finished it this morning and moved on to Mark Doty's Dog Years. It also claims to be a memoir, though it's lacking a subtitle. How can a memoir not have a subtitle? I sense subterfuge. Anyway, I've only read the first page thus far, but it seems to be about dogs. Oh, yeah. Dogs. The people upstairs may have gotten a dog. I'm not sure yet. They definitely had one this weekend, a very large dog with a bandanna around its neck (a look which irritates me because last year a worthless coworker used to frequently bring in his equally worthless, bandanna-wearing penis-substitute of a dog into the office) was in the entryway on Saturday, and I heard barking on Sunday afternoon before I left. Perdita heard it too, and was visibly spooked by it. (I'm not projecting or anthropomorphizing, I swear. Her precise emotion was "spooked." She's my daughter. I know these things.) Nothing yesterday or this morning, though, so I'm choosing to believe that they were just, like, keeping the dog for someone else. Because I refuse to believe they've brought in yet another source of noise. They haven't, and that's all there is to it. Last night was my final paid session with Raphaela. We're continuing on, though. I'm not done, not yet. The question is where. At the moment we're thinking of moving to her other gym, an indie place in The Castro. The advantages are that it's far less busy than the Gold's (which was almost comically packed last night) so we won't have to fight for equipment, membership is cheaper, and most importantly, she can charge me less than half of what I paid Gold's, since the other gym doesn't act as a middleman. The primary disadvantage, and it's a whopper, is that it's in The Castro. Not so convenient and such for parking, especially when we meet in the early afternoon. But we're going to give it a first-hit's-free shot this Friday and see what happens. Either way, though, I'm going to keep hitting the Gold's for cardio stuff. This is the only way it works, and I have a lot of reading to do. | ||
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Monday, 8 September 2008 (dead moon ritual) 7:00pm Just got back from a session with Raphaela. Picked up my new gym shoes this afternoon, spent most of today dealing with constant fires on my client sites, hosted Bad Movie Night last night (Steel Magnolias, huge crowd, who knew?), did an hour at the gym that afternoon, got up at noon after hanging out with Sadie until three in the morning and not getting to bed until four, hosted the second night of Working for the Weakened on Saturday evening, hit the gym that afternoon after sleeping for about ten hours all told that morning, hosted the first night of Working for the Weakened on Friday evening, got the squid tightened before that, and earlier in the afternoon I picked up my replacement sunglasses, which aren't quite the same since they have curved lenses rather than flat even though they put in the same order as before, but nothing is ever the same as it was before, ever, and that's what keeps things interesting. On Wednesday I'm performing in Meliza's SF Fringe show, Thursday night I'm having dinner with The Ex (for whom that description doesn't qualify anymore, does it? She's An Ex, but not The Ex, not anymore and not by a long shot, but she's definitely The First), Friday morning I'm seeing Raphaela again and that night and Saturday night I'm hosting the final shows of Working for the Weakened, plus there's a Dark Room benefit happening on Friday and Saturday night before my show, and I'm performing in the one on Saturday. I'm not officially one of the hosts for Bad Movie Night on Sunday, but I'll be there anyway because I love it. It's at times like this that I feel like if I'm not careful, I'll careen right into full burnout. But I also know that I've never looked back at a period in my life and regretted being busy. | ||
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Sunday, 7 September 2008 (drowning in air) sometime after midnight Some nights do better than others. It's just how it goes. | ||
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Friday, 5 September 2008 (nocturnal remission) sometime after midnight This evening on Valencia near 18th, after I got the squid tightened but before I hosted Working for the Weakened, I saw a girl crossing the street and fell madly, painfully in love with her. But it's okay, because I'll probably never see her again. | ||
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Thursday, 4 September 2008 (keeping in luxury) 7:33pm The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival was great. I especially dug the SF Sound Group, who in a wonderfully perverse touch are completely acoustic, nary an electronic instrument to be found. They fit in perfectly all the same. I also liked Phill Niblock, the drone artist who I especially wanted to see, though there's something increasingly unsatisfying about noise musicians who just sit behind their laptops and don't do anything. At least Robert Rich still brings a bunch of equpiment with wires and stuff. If you're going to use a laptop, then at least pretend it's an instrument and that you aren't just hitting "play." Move the mouse around, or something. Bunny enjoyed the show, too. It's her kind of thing, and it was nice to catch up with her. The show ran past eleven, and even though I dropped off Bunny and went straight home, I still didn't get to bed until nearly one, which is way past my bedtime. To be nice to myself, I set the alarm for six rather than five. A whole extra hour to sleep! I was on the hamster wheel at the gym by half past seven, and at work by nine. So weird to not be the first one there. Plenty of fires were raging with clients (as they have been for weeks now), and I put most of them out. Kept me plenty busy. Since I won't be going to the gym on Friday at all—getting the squid tightened a couple hours before hosting a show will be all the physical trauma I need—I went to the gym again this evening. Raphaela was there both times, in between clients, and made me doubly promise that I'll take Friday off. And maybe even Saturday? Nah, probably not. | ||
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Wednesday, 3 September 2008 (blood on my hand) 2:45pm I didn't sleep so well last night, which didn't keep me from getting up at five this morning to go to the gym and do an hour of cardio. This is the only way it works. Speaking of working, from today's SF Weekly (September 3 - 9, 2008), page 34: Minimum RageThe picture, taken by Sister Edith last week, looks better than I thought it would. Tonight, I'm going to Project Artaud for the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival with Bunny, whom I haven't seen since the Fourth of July. We've both been busy. | ||
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Tuesday, 2 September 2008 (counting back from ten) 5:15pm Good heavens, but there's something wrong with my brain lately. As though losing my Wayfarers wasn't enough, I left my regular glasses at home this morning. I really don't know how I managed that, but they aren't in my regular bag or my gym bag or in Phoebe, so that means they're at home, which means I have to go home before the sun sets. Which I was probably going to do anyway, but still. It also meant I had to wear my icky backup sunglasses during my hour session with Raphaela today. I have to wear glasses when working with her so I can see her and/or see myself in the mirror to make sure my posture and stuff is correct. Otherwise, I'd just as soon be a misshapen blurry figure in the mirror, as opposed to the misshapen clear figure I am with my glasses on. She said that she's taking the Pilates stuff to "the next level." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it seems to involve saying frack you! to gravity. I won't be seeing her again until next Monday. Normally I'd have an appointment with her at noon on Friday, but I cancelled it because I'm getting my squid tightened that afternoon, and between those mini-traumas there's no way I'd be up for hosting Working for the Weakened that evening. It's going to feel weird going that long. I know it's not like all the progress I've made this past month will reverse itself because I'm only seeing her once this week, yet part of me a feels a little bit panicky, like I'll lose my momentum. But I know I won't. 7:01pm Falling firmly into the "no surprise" category is the fact that I can't find my glasses at home. They kinda have to be here, and yet they aren't. When I lose things, I lose 'em real good, dagnabbit. (As I was scouring the apartment, I listened to George Carlin's "Losing Things" routine, which has always been one of my favorites. It made me feel better.) Fortunately, much like with my errant sunglasses, I have a backup pair from '03, which are ironically newer than my newly missing '99 vintage pair. The frames are broken near the swingy part on the right side side and I don't care for how they look on me (hey, did my hair used to be black? when the hell was that?), but they work and I know where they are. Yay for redundancy. 10:11pm Sometimes—most of the time, more like—you have to accept that something's gone for good and be ready to move on before it reappears. In this case, I'd figured that my glasses were gone for good, probably having fallen out of my bag into between my apartment and the car this morning, or possibly just sucked into that localized black hole that's claimed so many small items in this place over the years. I had the older pair, and though I would need to get the frames fixed professionally, they'd do the job. Moving on. And then I found my regular glasses far under the Phoebe's front passenger seat, that part where one runs the risk of getting one's arm stuck if they reach. But my arm didn't get stuck (for a change) and I got my glasses back. Yay. Moving on. | ||
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Monday, 1 September 2008 (the other big lie) 3:52pm At my office, because where else would I be on Labor Day? Did the salad-movie-early-to-bed thing on Friday night. Went to the gym on Saturday morning for the requisite half hour on one and half hour on the other, had lunch at the office, then walked to Ilene's place. Since the semester began she's been neck-deep in homework, and requested that we do something to get her out of her apartment. A walk, or something. So, walk we did, the entire length of Polk, from Fox Plaza to the Maritime Museum and back. Four miles total, not counting the mile or so I'd walked between my office and her place, nor the hour of cardio I'd done earlier. On the return trip we had an early dinner at Miller's Deli. Ilene had never been there before, nor even had any real exposure to Jewish deli food, and I'm always happy to expose people to it. Not that I'm any sort of expert on the Jewish deli experience, but I like it, and I have fond assocations with the food in general and Miller's in particular: it was part of the last really good night between Vash and I, of the final burst of hopefulness. (That less than forty-eight hours the center ceased to hold for good doesn't detract from the happiness of the memory. If anything, it makes it stronger.) We left Ilene's place at three and returned at six. I promptly crawled onto her bed and fell asleep, fully clothed and in what I've come to think of as the Perdita Position. As I slept, she returned to her homework. I was up again at half past eight, though it was the kind of nap where the only way I knew for sure that I slept was because time had passed, and there was simply no way that I'd just laid there awake for two and a half hours. That, and I did feel rested. By the time we'd returned to Ilene's place after the walk I was already planning on calling it quits for the night, but the disco nap got me back on my feet. So, we took a cab back to my office and drove Phoebe to The Mighty, a SoMA club I'd never heard of. It was a work-related event, the unveiling of NakedSword's Dirty Dozen, our "street team." Evidently they'll represent us at the Folsom Street Fair and other events. (Which reminds me, I should contact Rhonda about working the Power Exchange booth again this year.) Ilene and I were mostly there for the open bar—a White Russian, followed by the Seven and Seven—and so I could build up my Good Employee credit. Though my job is quite secure from a professional standpoint—especially after these past few weeks, when there have been a number of fires involving my clients that I've successfully navigated—the powers that be also appreciate it when we participate in work-related extracurricular activities as well, and more often than not I give the impression of someone who Doesn't Play Well With Others. Especially when I get dragged to a group lunch and end up sitting next to my archnemesis. But they weren't present, and Officer Dave and others were, and once the formalities of introducing the Dirty Dozen were over with, there wasn't much left to do but dance. Which Ilene and I did, though it took a bit of coaxing to get her onto the techno-heavy dancefloor, since she covets her Goth Points far more than I covet the few I have left. I intend to start getting my points back after the shape of my body has changed, working with Raphaela as well as daily on my own. (This is the only way it works.) I'm thirty-five, solo, and so help me, I will rock the Hot Topic look again. So we drank and danced, and we were seen, and I got bump-and-grindy with fellow employees because we're a gay pr0n company and we can do that outside of the office and it doesn't have to mean anything except that we work well together and that I fit in with the company culture, and that's a very important point for me to make. I've been at NakedSword since April of 2005, for forty-one months now, and the turnover in the meantime has been such that (not counting the owners of the company) there are only a half-dozen other people who've been here longer. I'm a survivor, I know that much. Ilene offered to let me crash at her place, but by the time we left (after most of the other NakedSword folks had left and there was no longer any tactical advantage to staying), I'd danced and hydrated the booze out of my system, so I went home. Made it there safely and everything. I've promised Raphaela that I'll take one day a week off from exercising, so I didn't go to the gym on Sunday. In the afternoon, Rhiannon reblondified my roots. Did a damned good job of it, too. (This Friday the squid gets tightened, a few hours before the opening night of Working for the Weakened. I'm not going to be seeing Raphaela that day, since between and hour with her and squidtightening, there's no way I'd have enough energy to host a show at ten in the evening.) From there we went to Pete and Sarah Goldie's place for their anniversary barbecue, and finally to The Dark Room for Bad Movie Night. It was a fantastic evening, with a nearly full house (not surprising, since the buzz around the feature Howard the Duck had been strong), and I was on my game in a big way. I'm not always. Some nights are better than others, and last night was one of the better ones. Naturally, I took the opportunity to push Working for the Weakened. Here's to hoping. | ||
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