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Tuesday, 30 September 2008 (the divine master plan is perfection) 2:58pm Didn't do a full hour this morning. More like fifty minutes. That's okay, though. I'm going back for an hour after work, and I did two hours yesterday evening, one working with Raphaela and one of solo cardio afterward. I'm just about done with Kerry Cohen's Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity, which I started on after I finished Falling into Manholes. It's interesting to read them back-to-back, since they cover similar thematic ground with very different tones. And they also give me hope that there is a market for my book. Sorta. That market will probably dry up by the time it's ready to be published, not to mention the queer/fetish angle has already scared off one agent. Alas. Doesn't mean I won't try, though getting it published is not so important as getting it written. Which I haven't been doing much of lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on it. I've done a lot of editing in my head, both of stuff that's on paper and stuff that hasn't—I've thrown out a lot of material that never even got written, which is a hell of a timesaver—so when I am able to sit down and get back to work, I'll have a head start. And, after finishing the first one, I'll move on to the next two. I see it playing out like this: the current book, Exchange and Descent: A Memoir of Love, Loss, Regret and Redemption in America's Most Notorious Sex Club (the subtitle isn't set in stone, but isn't the longest I've seen, either) covers March 28, 2005 through April 21, 2007. The next book, Landing on Water: A Memoir of Transition covers December 31, 1998 through December 31, 1999, and the third book, tentatively called Shelter from the Storm: A Memoir of How Things Were, will go from January 1, 2000 through March 27, 2005. And maybe then I'll move on to that one (1) fiction novel idea I have. Everything in due time. | ||
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Monday, 29 September 2008 (kick the traces) 4:35pm We got our crowd back for Bad Movie Night yesterday, as I suspected Dirty Dancing would do. Before the show, Jim and I were interviewed for a new travel website doing video segments on cool things to do in major cities. We're one of the first ones, in fact. Neat. Earlier in the day at the Folsom Street Fair, I met some new people and made some connections. I think. I guess I'll find out. | ||
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Sunday, 28 September 2008 (staring down the barrel of the middle distance) 11:23am At The EndUp, after waiting far longer in line outside than I generally care to, I checked in my jacket and my purse at the coat check. The purse in question was actually a Grindhouse lunchbox, which amused the coat check guy no end. I'm pretty sure that's why he only charged me for one item rather than two. Those couple of bucks that I saved (not to mention the fact that I didn't pay to get in, nor did I buy a drink) were more than compensated by the fact that the money I put into my boot evidently flew out while dancing. I'm not sure how much—a few small bills, a few not-so-small bills, probably more than I needed to have on my person. Fail! When I discovered it had happened, I kept on dancing. It made dancing all the more important. A couple hours later, I was in sitting on one of the bunks in the Barracks at The Power Exchange. It is, I would argue, one of the sleaziest places I could have possibly been, in a dim corner of the basement dungeon of the most disreputable sex club in San Francisco. Despite its reputation it's neither unhygienic nor unsafe, but conventional wisdom suggests that you can't get much lower, let alone in the Barracks. Anyway, I was next to a blonde German tranny. Sometimes we were surrounded by men and their dicks, and when we were the other tranny were having at the dicks, sucking one while fondling another. I politely declined. All I had to say to any given man was i'm not interested and he'd move away from me. No fuss, no muss. The rumors of non-consensual sex are greatly exaggerated, as most rumors are. Anyway, when she finished off one particular guy from a group and it was just her and I again, she started talking about Sarah Palin. Because you can't escape the zeitgeist, no matter how deep you burrow. | ||
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Saturday, 27 September 2008 (the spark of addiction) 8:47pm Did an hour with Raphaela yesterday morning. Both her and a co-worker commented that I look like I'm getting a tan. I can't even begin to wrap my brain around that one, since I've gotten into the habit of putting on sunscreen every day. They both said it doesn't look bad, that my face looks good with a little extra color, but still. After work, Rhiannon and I had dinner at Velvet Cantina. I had a not-too-shabby margarita and the Velvet Lasagna, which I ordered partially because of the description ("Flour tortilla layered with beer marinated ground beef [emphasis mine], chorizo, cheese, onions, potatoes and finished with a roasted chile de arbol sauce, rice and choice of beans") and because it's called a Velvet Lasagna, godsdamnit. How can I not try something like that? When we left, I was very conscious of it in my stomach. It wasn't a bad feeling, but rather the sense that yeah, I was definitely full. I'd only had a few chips beforehand and none afterward. Not too long ago the basket would have been easily polished. I can only conclude that my stomach is getting physically smaller, which means that what Raphaela and I are doing is working. Which I knew anyway. On our way back to The Dark Room, a quasi-metrosexual outside The Beauty Bar flagged us down, asking for recommendations of places to dance. That's the main problem with obviously being a local: getting asked for directions. Constantly. I worked the door for Uphill Both Ways and Rhiannon did the tech, and afterward we joined them at Cha Cha Cha (the one in the Mission, not the other one where things started) for a pitcher of some purplish beverage whose name I never quite caught. It was okay, but I was already fading. I was home and in bed by two, and up again at half past nine. I could have slept longer, except the giraffe was rampaging. I swear, sometimes it feels like I can hear it in the ear which is pressed into the pillow. Since Bunny had spoke highly of it a few months back and Raphaela was telling me about it yesterday, I went to Borders and bought Skinny Bitch. if I'm going to do this, I figure, I should do it all the way. From there I went to Tyrol's spin class at the gym. He put out a list for us to put our email addresses so he can let us know when he'll be having subs, and he turned directly to me and said: especially seelix, since i know you like her. Very sweet of him. From here I go to the Raging Stallion party around the corner at The EndUp. I got the ticket for free through work, which is as good a reason as any. From there, probably, to The Power Exchange. Folsom Weekend, after all. Gotta go at least once. | ||
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Friday, 26 September 2008 (strong enough) sometime after midnight Folsom Friday '08: survived. (you live, you learn, you love, you learn, you cry, you learn, you lose, you learn, you bleed, you learn, you scream you learn) | ||
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Thursday, 25 September 2008 (eric's trip) 6:14pm The chair's pretty bad, too. That's part of it. I think that's why my lower back has been hurting. (And not the intense exercise.) If all goes well, I should be getting a new chair soon, one that'll be more friendly to my back. | ||
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Wednesday, 24 September 2008 (buying it new) 6:19pm My workspace is ergonomically fracked. I've known this all along, of course. It became obvious after about two days that this building—never intended to be an office, I suspected—has a certain downward tilt. My side of the room, anyway. After an inexplicably long wait we got carpets for under our chairs to stop the rolling, and while they perform that intended task, it doesn't change the overall angle, and gravity just keeps on sucking. I'm okay enough when I'm at my regular desktop computer, but when I turn to my left to work on my laptop, my energy's all wrong. I don't mean in terms of chi or feng shui or any of that (though I'd be willing to get one of those little sandboxes with the pebbles and the rake if I thought it would work), but I feel like I'm sitting perpendicular to an incline, and it just saps away my energy. Granted, my body's overall energy has changed in other ways, notably that I've been exercising more in the past couple months than I have since 1998 (or at least 2003—hey, I'm right on schedule!), but that can't account for all of it. And I refuse to let it, because the net result is that I've gotten almost no substantial writing done since we moved into the new office. That's a very bad thing. At this exact desk in this same chair at the old office, turning to the left and working on my laptop, is how I wrote the vast majority of my essay for Coming Out...Again, and I probably worked harder on that those couple thousands of words than any other. In terms of how much I wrote and edited and rewrote and edited and deleted and rewrote and so on, anyway. Obviously the book is much longer and has involved a lot more time and effort. Almost none of which I've expended these past couple of months. That, as previously established, is a very bad thing. I've been experimenting with new locations for my laptop on my desk, shifting over the desktop computer and removing the keyboard tray from under the table which never did anything but get in the way of my freakishly long legs anyway. I haven't quite figured out the correct configuration yet, but I will. I have to. Something's gotta work. | ||
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Tuesday, 23 September 2008 (moth to the flame) 9:21pm I don't like drug casualties. It's a prejudice, I'm fully admit it. (I have a lot of prejudices, being a bigot and all.) I feel sorry for them, but I don't like having to be in the same room as them, either. Creeps me out. | ||
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Monday, 22 September 2008 (recoiling in grace) 11:40am Yesterday's Bad Movie Night, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, was one of our lowest turnouts in months. Oh well. They can't all be hits, and the Emmys may have had something to do with it. Or maybe people just know how lousy the movie is. I have high hopes for next week, though. Afterward, I went with Alexia and Rhiannon to meet up with Sean at The Men's Room in the Castro. I got the impression that the others didn't like the bar very much, but I did. A positively lethal Bloody Mary, which was small but kicked my ass nicely, and a decent jukebox. It was one of those situations where they had to turn down the house stereo when I started using the jukebox, meaning there was absolutely not doubt in anyone's mind who selected the horrible music they were being subjected to. (They might have guessed it was the tranny at the end of the bar anyway.) I was quite blissful, though, buzzed and dancing and singing along on my stool to music that makes me happy. It's kinda the whole point. Rhiannon and I talked a bit about me participating in her Rankin-Bass Christmas Cabaret this December. Like, being on stage and singing and everything. It's not something I've done since playing Karen Carpenter in Zippy the Pinhead, and I've missed it. There's the niggling problem of my tonedeafness and lousy voice, but hey. Let's put on a show! After a particular boozy weekend, I'm back on track. And I wasn't that far off track anyway—I worked out on Saturday afternoon, and even though I ate quite a bit of the free and marginally tasty food at the Folsom Street Fair gala, I wasn't exactly eating mayonnaise out of the jar, either. I have an appointment with Raphaela this evening, will be going to the gym tomorrow morning and probably doing the spin classes on Tuesday and Wednesday night, the new usual, the only way it works. And it's working so far. Sean became the third person last week to comment on my overall appearance, especially some sort of glowiness in my face. Maybe it's because I haven't trimmed my bangs in some time, and blonde bangs over brown eyebrows is an inherently youthful look. Or not. Anyway, Raphaela sent me both the measurements she took on our first meeting in July and the ones she took on Friday:
That's still pretty ginormous, and I'm a little skeptical about the waist measurement—I'm pretty sure she said forty on Friday, not thirty-eight—but there's definitely been a reduction, and I can even wear my Final Girl tank top again, which I haven't been able to in years. (Nor have I especially wanted to, and I'm happy to want to again, which is a victory on a different level.) It doesn't look as good on me as it did on Vash, but that's a given. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sunday, 21 September 2008 (a beacon to lead us there) 5:35pm Shortly after Tor and I arrived at the Gala last night, one of the servers—a small fellow who reminded quite a lot of Danielle's old boyfriend Ixe—pointed at me and said: blade runner! It's a rare and wonderful thing when someone gets what I'm trying to do. I'm feeling fine today, even though it was one of my boozier nights on record. Started with a Seven and Seven at Divas as I waited to meet up with Tor. I was also writing in my notebook, so like, clockwork, two different men asked me what I was writing. Happens every single fracking time. One of them phrased it as "jotting:" what are you jotting down? I took umbrage at that. I was not jotting. At the risk of giving my writing too much credit, I don't jot. Anyway, next was a Tequila shot which Tor bought for us, then a Super Dirty Martini at the Gala followed by a Lemon Drop Martini when they ran out of olives. That's plenty right there, and at least enough to allow me to deal with the horror that was the reconstructed face of Joan Rivers. I tell you, even from well over fifty feet away, her plastic skin made my carbon-based skin crawl. After the show, which may not have provided enough material for a Medialoper article after all, we went off in search of more libation. The Lush Lounge was too crowded and Tor wasn't feeling up for Divas (not to mention there was a cover charge by that point), so he suggested the R Bar. I was game for pretty much anything, so we headed that direction. I heard someone calling my name from behind, and lo and behold, it was Raphaela. Tiny, tiny city. She was accompanied by her roommate, who also came to Working for the Weakened and works (or at least works out) at the NPTI. Evidently feeling that the R Bar lacked enough vowels, they suggested going to Rye. I remained game, as did Tor, so that's where we ended up. Raphaela bought us shots of something whose name I didn't quite catch, and then I ordered a Blood and Sand, primarily because it involved blood orange juice. Raphaela teased me that of course I'd order the drink with the word "blood" in it. She's figured me out pretty well. I don't do guilt these days, but really, there's no way to feel less guilty about drinking than to do it with the person charged with getting you into shape. Tor and I left by about a quarter to one, and he dropped me off at the office, where I'd parked Phoebe earlier. Not feeling quite up for driving, I sat at my desk and watched the Rifftrax version of Star Trek VI until two, at which I point I was sober enough to motorvate. I considered going to the Power Exchange, but decided not to. I'll most likely hide there next weekend, and given that the giraffe was extra super-loud this morning, it was probably the right decision. On that note, after having seen and heard it the last few times I was at Pete and Sarah Goldie's place, I've ordered a white noise machine. I think it'll help. | ||
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