forty-four

Sunday was my birthday. I received two phone calls from people on Saturday wishing me happy birthday, thinking the 27th was my birthday. One of them was from E1*; he made up a silly song "Vagina Free" in honor of me (on my voice mail); I played it for S1 and he said, "You have to be friends with this person," meaning because we're so much alike. It was pretty crazy; I haven't erased it yet.

I also got two packages in the mail on Saturday, one an intentional birthday package from M5, a CD of songs by Sean Hayes, whom she refers to as her "new boyfriend." He is cute, and his songs are nice. The package came with a card in it with a woodblock print of an olive over the word "YOU." (Get it?) Inside was a super-sweet message from M5, things I really needed to hear (or read), and she knew it because she reads this blog. (But she would've said those things anyway, to be sure, she just apparently thought the timing was right, and so it was.)

The other package was from J4, returning my copy of the Junebug DVD which I'd loaned him. He sent it back with a bunch of silly promotional stuff from his and M4's life in art. (Probably worth something...!)

I got an email Hallmark card from A4, a silly little couple of characters singing a birthday song (but messing up a lot first) which made me laugh. A4 is funny, well on her way to be a goofy old lady, though she's got years to go; she sent us a handmade Halloween card with two little pieces of petrified wood in it, wrapped in butcher block paper, with our names on them, which she had picked out special for each of us, though I can't for the life of me figure out why those particular rocks spoke our names to her. (Both S1 and I thought the little packages were candy...)

When I went to bed Saturday night -- or when S1 thought I was in bed for good (and I did too) -- he put out a chocolate cake with a walnut topping that he made while I was away. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my phone (which I need by the bed to tell me what time it is when I wake up in the morning) and it ended up being in my jacket in the kitchen. I tried to ignore the foil-covered cake pan when I walked through that room several times, but finally fessed up. "I don't want to spoil the surprise on the table," I said. "I won't look at it, I'll just know that there's a surprise waiting for me!"

On Sunday at 11, S1 and I went to Casa de Luz (a vegan macrobiotic restaurant) for brunch. I treated myself to a 11-meal card and put both mine and Steven's brunches on it (he's po'). I had twig tea, creamy zucchini soup, brown rice, sesame tempeh stir-fry with carrots & leeks, sweet potatoes, garden salad with raspberry orange dressing, spelt & barley pancakes with fruit syrup of peaches, apples & cherries. I wanted kale but the bowl was always empty. I had seconds of some of the above stuff and was full. When we got home, we were too full for cake yet, but after a while, I made a pot of coffee then went and bought a half gallon of natural vanilla bean Blue Bell, both of which lubricated the cake quite nicely. S1 said the cake was an experiment that went extremely well; he had to use a lot of brown sugar in the cake batter because he ran out of granulated, and the topping was a made-up walnut praline concoction. He was right, it was/is moist and delicious (last night, we froze most of the remainder because it's just too much...)

We went to see Into The Wild, a beautiful, devastating movie. We hardly said a word on the way home, we were both so taken by it.

I dropped S1 off at home and made my way to South Austin, to C4's house, where he was having a birthday gathering of his own. I hadn't talked to him in a while, have been feeling a bit estranged from all of the people I've met at the Dance, but knew he would be calling around our birthday. Last year, we did paint ball with a bunch of friends; I wasn't up for that, and since that time, I've decided (or realized) that his friends are really not so much my friends. C4 has fans; he's one of those people that everybody loves (myself included). I didn't really want to be around his fans this year. When he called to invite me to the gathering, it didn't sound like it was a celebration of us, but rather that it was a celebration of him that he really wanted me to come to. And I believe he wanted me to come to it -- and I don't think we have to celebrate our birthdays together every year now and forever -- but I just didn't feel up to it. Still, I tried. I got to South Austin but then couldn't remember exactly where his new house is. I tried several times; I'm pretty sure it's off of South First Street, I turned into the neighborhood at three or four different lights, but as soon as I got off the main street I knew I wasn't in the right place. I could have called, but instead took it as a sign which I readily went with. I drove back home, picked up my notebook and went to Magnolia for dinner alone.

I sat in a booth at Magnolia for two hours working on a new chapter I've been trying to get through for a week or so; it's a new chapter six that became necessary when I was working on what was previously chapter six. S1 said there needed to be more between Diamond (formerly Nedra) and Randy. I knew he was right, but it took me some time to breath life into the story. It started happening at Magnolia, over a plate of spinach fettucini with sauteed artichokes and mushrooms. I came home and wrote for two more hours. It was a great feeling.

Now my schedule is off. Or maybe it's right on. I had such a hard time working yesterday (job work not creative work). I wanted to revisit new chapter six, wanted to transcribe it from longhand into the computer. But I really need to make money too. Last night I started a new transcription job at 10 and finished at midnight, and I decided that today I would alternate between job and novel. But first I felt like I needed to catch up on a little blogging.

So there. Another day older and slightly less deep in debt...

wrong things for the right reasons

I just tried to put a bug out that Timmy was trying to catch and it stung/bit me! I don't know what kind of a bug it was; it looked kind of like a mosquito hawk but with a bigger abdomen. I'm not timid about most insects, and am used to rescuing grasshoppers, crickets and other things from Timmy which he likes to bring in from outside to terrorize, behead, etc. (He brought in a baby gecko once but it was already dead by the time I got it from him). If the insect I'm rescuing is a roach or other such insect, I'll find something to scoop it into to take it outside (roach pee is very strong smelling)

It wasn't a bad sting it just scared me. I tossed the insect to the floor halfway to the door and cursed at it, or cursed at the sting. I couldn't find the insect after that, and after a few short moments, couldn't feel the sting or find any mark where I'd been gotten, and I felt kind of silly, and a little sorry for the insect; he only stung me because he was terrified because I could easily have squashed him in my big pink hand.

Interesting that I dreamed about spiders last night. Or one in particular. She had a plump body and wound up on some woman's neck; the woman had walked through the web after I had moved it from the spot in the walkway where people were mostly likely to run into it.

That was outside of a house I walked into, in my dream, with R4. He and I walked through the house hand in hand. It was a long house and each room had a group of two to six people and lots of baked goodies. It went on forever. I got a cupcake of some kind in the first room, then we walked through rooms with pies, powdered donuts, brownies, you name it. In the very last room, someone offered us something to drink and I was going for bright red punch and R4 said he just wanted water. I said, "Water! What a great idea!" And there were two ladies standing by the faucet trying to figure out where they saw me perform in my Act (with S1). They were bastardizing the word Sonoma in the most interesting ways.

yours, mine, and ours

So many years ago, when making a documentary of our life seemed like such a good idea, our investor (B3*) -- who came up with the idea in the first place after seeing a documentary on iconic lesbian folk singer and Tupperware lady, Phranc -- bought us all the makin's for the movie, cameras, editing equipment, mini-DV tapes, plane tickets to LA for a weekend class in Final Cut Pro.

After the experiment of documenting our lives was over, the idea of working on the editing of the film seemed to me akin to getting a full-body sea salt scrub by a Russian woman after falling asleep naked on the beach for two hours on the sunniest of days. In other words, I didn't want to have anything to do with it. (Plus, it was a one-person job.) S1 took the footage and all of the equipment and went to New Jersey and spent months just logging the 300+ hours of footage; I went to Florida with the van we'd bought because that seemed like the most logical thing to do, though I grew to hate it because things kept going wrong and I was responsible for paying to get it fixed as well as the monthly payment, which was something like $460. I was living off of credit cards, and Steven was living on a budget provided by B3.

Eventually, S1 took the van off my hands and was able to sell it to a band in San Francisco, but I still haven't recovered from the financial disaster our life together had become during living on the road in a travel trailer with the Act and the time after that when I didn't know what I was doing, blinded by an early mid-life depression, sinking deeper into debt with no co-commiserator.

When I was in Nashville, because he didn't need it, S1 sent me the Apple laptop (the first of the computers B3 bought for the editing of the film; eventually a desktop had to be bought because the documentary was too big a project to create on a laptop). I thought I would use it, but I didn't really; I stored it somewhere, moved a couple of times, and when I left Nashville for Austin, I couldn't find it and eventually decided it had been stolen. The original dress I wore in the Act, as well as other costumes, had definitely been stolen; the guy I lived with had a lot of shady characters for friends, cross-dressing crystal meth addicts with AIDS (seriously), so it seemed likely that that was where the computer and costumes went. However, the last time S1 and I visited Nashville, L3 -- with whom I lived first in Nashville -- said, "I found your laptop computer!" She had done some home remodeling and it showed up in a bedside table.

I said all that to say this:
I just started a volunteer job for a theater company here, and the sound designer is going out of town and was trying to find another Apple laptop to put the sounds on for the run of the show. I asked S1 if it was okay if I used the laptop B3 bought us. He said yes, "just bring it home every night." This morning he asked how it went last night at the dress rehearsal and I told him about the technical issues mostly related with the two projectors I'm running (I'm not doing anything with the laptop, just volunteering it for the run). I said something to S1 along the lines of "Our computer worked fine; the program the sound designer put onto it is called QLab... maybe it'll be useful down the road."

S1 is going to school to get his undergraduate degree, and then plans to go to film school. I'm sure he'll be using all of this equipment and more. But it gave me a weird feeling in the next moment when he said something using the phrase "my computer," meaning the laptop. I bristled internally, like he had excluded me in some way, from ownership of something that was originally bought for us, or maybe from ownership of the life we had together. I don't know.

I sat with the discomfort for a while, thought I should say something to S1 -- What, that it hurt my feelings? -- and decided to just let it be. (He'll read this blog eventually, so he'll hear it, but hopefully he won't feel like I'm attacking but rather that I'm trying to work it out for myself.)

This was one of the earliest issues in our relationship, this ownership thing, this idea of who's what belongs to whom? What is yours? What's mine? What does "ours" mean? When we were working on the faux-autobiography of the characters we played onstage in the Act, I did most of the writing and rewriting and S1 did most of the editing. The story was told from my point of view, so I suggested putting on the cover "By JDJB with S1," not to lessen his creative part of it but to go along with the more tongue-in-cheek aspect of the book, being that it was a faux autobiography. But S1 was adamant that the book should be clearly created as being by both of us. I didn't fight it too much.

More recently, I call the truck I drive "mine." S1 borrows it, asks me "Can I borrow your truck?" But that seems right to me; I paid a lot of money for it! We both call the washing machine ours (I think -- there aren't really a lot of opportunities to discuss ownership of the washing machine!), even though I paid for it; but maybe that has something to do with the fact that he's paying me back for half of it on a monthly basis. The neighbor's cat that I adopted is mine, but that's because S1 doesn't want a cat, doesn't want a pet, and (even though he doesn't ask for it) he makes a little money off of feeding him when I'm away for 24 hours or more. (I wouldn't likely be inclined to do that if Timmy were our cat.)

I want my own life. I was very insistent about getting financially untangled from S1. When he moved to Austin, I made it clear (to myself if not to him, though I think he understands my need for this perfectly well) that I pay my own bills and he pays his. He's probably as broke now as I was when I moved to Florida, and I don't know if I feel the urge to treat him to a meal or a movie or something nowadays because I'm more generous than he was then or because he and his poverty are right under my nose. And why do I find myself fighting the urge to be generous? Is it because I feel like he didn't seem to have a lot of concern about my poverty when he was living high on the hog, or is it truly because I'm still working on getting out of debt?

I think of the day when I don't have anymore debt. I can work about half as much as I do now and would still have money to save. I could save up and take a trip around the world, could take a month or more off to do that if I wanted. I picture myself being able to treat S1 to things that I don't (and can't) treat him to now -- a trip somewhere with me, regular outings to restaurants. I don't know if I'll do these things. By the time I'm out of debt S1 might have a career in film or writing music for plays or something. And when I say "career," I mean making money at it. All I hope for is that he'll get me free tickets to see what he's worked on!

I didn't even bring up R4 (haven't brought him up in the blog at all so far). He was "our" lover. He brought S1 and me back together. We both say now that had R4 not come into our life, we probably wouldn't be friends now. After the Act, R4 and I tried a few times to get together on our own. I really wanted to but felt that it would have been a betrayal of S1 if I ended up with R4 (but not because I thought S1 and I would ever be a "couple" again, nor did I even want that), and so I kept punking out on R4. I regret that on occasion. Sometimes I think that's the reason I haven't been able to find love again since the end of the Act (and the subsequent end of our varied relationships), because I hold everyone I'm interested in up to the Idea of what R4 and I had, or what it seemed like we had, or what I believe we could have had. But now R4 has his own life, quite separate from me and from S1. And there's no question in my mind that he has doesn't have any rights to our laptop computer.

basketball diary

Sometimes I have to take a nap in the middle of the day, my transcription work makes my eyes so heavy; 15 or 20 minutes usually does the trick. I don't normally set an alarm.

I dreamt I had a heart attack. I was sitting in a room, in a circle with a group of six or eight people. There was a basketball. We were tossing it to one another. There were some rules: if you did it this way, you got a point, if you did it another way, you lost a turn. I threw it to some guy across the way and did a third thing that pissed him off... I think the ball missed him completely. I had to get out of my seat to retrieve it for him. When I turned my back to return to my seat, he hit me with the basketball so hard that it lodged in the curve of my neck. I said something like, "Well, I guess I got the point." And all of us in the group had a chuckle, which seemed to be at the angry guy's expense. I tossed the ball back to him, sat down but had to get up again because I couldn't catch my breath and my heart was racing. The room was a white box. The seats were tan folding chairs, the ball was orange. I pushed the silver bar to open the door and there was nighttime. The noise of opening the door woke me up. This is what it would be like to have a heart attack, I thought to myself.

I think:
I had just read an email from the moderator of the writing critique group before I lay down. One of the guys (a brand new guy) who was supposed to submit this week for next week's group (along with me and another woman) wrote in to say he didn't realize the group that week would fall on Halloween.

Obviously, the ball is very pumpkin-like. The guy in question is someone who annoyed me a bit at the first group he was at -- jumping in when I was making my critiques to suggest what I might be saying; I had to say, "Wait your turn," which got a little titter from everyone who (I think) seemed to be a bit annoyed by his pushiness his first time there as well. He had written his email a few days ago and there had been a few emails from other group members wondering what we were supposed to do (particularly, I thought, because the new guy said he could submit but wouldn't be there to receive his critique -- oh, we'd be honored to critique your work in your absence!).

The email I read before my nap from the moderator said, "We haven't heard feedback from J yet" (on whether we should go ahead or cancel the group that week). I wrote back and said I don't care either way, though I really hope they do cancel, because I'd love to have an extra week to work on the chapter I was gonna submit because after having gotten an editor going-over from S1 found out that it needs some work!

he's still out there

It was clear in less than 24 hours that E1* was not boyfriend material, at least not for me. I'm not really physically attracted to him, but prior to him coming to town to spend the night and take me to Maker Faire, I thought maybe physical attraction wasn't all that important, thought that perhaps that was keeping me unnecessarily single. But no.

We walked through the Maker Faire store first, which was probably a mistake, because it gave me a really confused vision of what the event was gonna be. E1 had gone to a couple of Maker Faires in San Francisco and he was very excited about this one, the first in Austin (and probably the first anywhere around here).

E1 thought a Make magazine on a table was free and he was ready to take it until he was told by a nerdy guy with a hanging placard that it was $15, he made jokes at every other table we came to, to anyone in earshot, "All these free things sure are great, huh?!"

That wasn't so bad. What really made me uncomfortable was when we came to a booth where a preteen Asian girl was doing a presentation on how to make an iPod cover out of duct tape. We were standing at the back and to the side of the chairs where half a dozen or so people were watching the girl. A woman standing in front of us, hearing us arrive (obviously the girl's proud mother with her movie camera capturing every intriguing moment), stepped aside, motioned to the chairs and said, "Have a seat." E1 said under his breath but totally loud enough for her to hear, "Don't tell me what to do." It took me a few moments to recover from that. He "corrected" himself in a sort of apologetic tone -- in the same under-his-breath-but-in-earshot way, "I'm okay standing," but I was thinking Ohmygod, how rude!

E1's a fun guy, but he tries a little too hard sometimes.

We did have fun, though; I tried to let these types of comments (and there were a lot of them) go, but it certainly made me find him less attractive in some sense. But that's okay, he could be good friend material.

We saw a Life Size Mouse Trap (like the game only using bowling balls and culminating in a 4,000 lb. safe dropping on a pumpkin). I got to ride on the 22-foot Star Wheel -- a metal contraption that seats three people who are supposed to pedal themselves to make the thing turn (not as easy as it's supposed to be, I don't believe). I was a little concerned right after I signed the tongue-in-cheekily named "Suicide Waiver" and just before I got on at the top of a hill, but I noticed that A2's son M5 was one of the guys wrangling it. He said "It's completely safe" (I was having visions of it falling over and somebody's arm getting chopped off) so I went for it. It was fun but a lot of strenuous work, and my back and leg muscles are feeling it today!

We saw the Diet Coke & Mentos Challenge, which E1 said I was the only person in the world who hadn't seen it on YouTube. It takes three hours to set up, one of the guys announced, and less than three minutes to set it off. I had no idea what to expect, but sat anxiously with hundreds of other people half an hour before the launch. E1 and I found a place in the shade of a Coca-Cola truck (it was a bright sunny day and beautiful but hot on my bald head). E1 is a photographer, and he is always snapping pictures in that way that intrudes on strangers and ostracizes friends; that's not a complaint, just an observation. I sensed in the midst of this that someone was sitting close to my left side. I turned and looked into the beautiful blue eyes and Tony Robbins smile of a blond man with a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon tattoo on his smooth, slender right bicep. "Hi!" he said. "Hello," said I. (I always say I don't have a "type," but men like this always do something to me.)

We chatted a bit before and after the Challenge, I stood behind him during the Challenge, and he held out a hand to be shook as he and his friends made their way off to The Barn. He still lingers in my mind... So, I decided I'm really not interested in a boyfriend just to have a boyfriend, I really do have to be attracted to him... Sigh.

Later, the Cyclecide (A2 & J2's new grandson's father is one of the creators of this and the Star Wheel) had a bicycle rodeo. And somehow I found myself riding on a bike tossing empty bike tires at poles like a game of horseshoe while being pelted by shaving creme & flour pies by audience members. I wasn't alone; it was a big group of us on bikes of all shapes, styles, and sizes. And again, during the last skit, "The Mosh Pit of Recklessness," there I was riding atop a too-tall bike, crashing into others, falling a looong way down, getting up and going for it again. It was a lot of fun, especially with the pink flowered skirt I'd gotten at the Swap-A-Rama-Rama minutes earlier which fit on my head perfectly to protect me (in a most oddly fashionable way) from the sun.

S1 made fried okra, sauteed squash and a green salad from our CSA farm box of the bi-week for the three of us E1 and I got home, then E1 and I went to see some improv at ColdTowne Theater. I had run into two of the people from ColdTowne at Maker Faire, one of whom was my teacher for Improv 101, both of whom I suddenly felt a vague since of not belong around after the class (because that whole world seems to be inhabited by mostly straight white 20-something boys). I still love improv, and I think these two people are some of the best at it -- and E1 and I were lucky to catch their two-person act. I think E1 liked it (I believe he only fell asleep because he'd had a long day, longer than mine because he drove here from Houston).

We both slept (separately) very well, and got up this morning and had a delicious brunch at Casa de Luz, my favorite vegan restaurant in the world.

i coulda been somebody

S1* & I went to see a conversation between Tony Kushner and Steven Deitz (a UT professor and playwright in his own right) tonight. The audience was mostly gay men and old ladies. When I got there, S1 was the first one in line behind a gaggle of blue hairs! It felt like home.

During the conversation between these two men -- I'm not sure exactly when it happened, perhaps when the "young writers" were asking their questions -- I got this pain in my sternum, a feeling of great disappointment, or something. I'm not sure what it was. I brought it up to S1 afterward, as we walked to our favorite standby restaurant Madam Mam's on the Strip.

It was just a feeling of having got to a point in my life where I know this is never gonna happen for me. I'll never be up on a stage talking about my career, the things I've done; no one will be all that interested in my opinion about anything in that way. I don't think it was a feeling of jealousy, just a different viewpoint, sort of a painful thing, a regret, like the feeling you get 30 minutes after eating a stuffed pepper.

S1 says he has those feelings too, and the antidote for him is thinking about the work we did for ten years in our Act. He says it probably doesn't work for me in the same way because I am so at odds with the Act and all that we did, the "difference" we made in the world. (Still, we're not up on any stage talking about it. Not that I want that!)

We spent the walk to Madam Mam's, his meal of green curry, mine of coconut soup, and the walk home talking about these things. I want to figure this shit out. Why do I have disappointment about our Act?

I think I feel a sense of letdown about what happened to us, what happened to me -- the things we were aware of and, perhaps even more importantly, the things we didn't learn about until late in the game or after it was all over.

S1 and I brought different things to the table. He says that conflict was our creative strength. Perhaps, but I feel a sense of betrayal because I thought we were in on it together and come to find out sometime later, he was doing things in the beginning because he was "afraid" of me (in some sense; I think it has to do with his shyness, but that's the word he used), and later he expressed that he was and had been angry at me for some time. It wasn't something he was harboring for the most part; I think he just finally realized it. But still, these things do their damage.

Before we came together and started the Act, I was a writer, a behind the scenes kind of artist. I didn't know I wanted to do it any other way. S1, too. He was a songwriter for theater. It just kinda worked out that what we each did worked well together, except that we were the ones who had to do it. And so we did.

Okay, I got way distracted somewhere in the middle of that last paragraph by a phone call from C3 in Kansas City. And I've had a beer in the meantime, and I'm not sure what I'm trying to say anymore. So, I'll have to visit this conversation with myself later.

what's better than that?

Oh, the simple pleasures! Timmy runs through the house joyfully, making the beaded curtain clack longer than usual because he has just peed in his box.

S1 and I went to see American Fork at the Austin Film Festival last night. It was disappointing. But we had a good time out. Beforehand we went to Hut's for 2-4-1 veggie burgers and large peppered onion rings. Mmm.

I had five cavities filled yesterday, and have an appointment to get the other three filled on Monday and get my teeth cleaned. It's been a long time, and although I feel like I got my jaw socked in a fight, it also feels good to know I'm taking care of myself.

I spent two hours at J2 & A2's this morning putting his medicine doses in sandwich baggies. I had been meaning to call for the last couple of days -- since that's kind of my job -- and got a message last night when we got out of the movie from J2 saying, "I'm down to one bedtime baggie and another baggie of pills I can't figure out." (He's blind.)

I really want to go see Trail of the Screaming Forehead at the AFF today at 3:00, but I haven't done a lick of work yet.

My hands smell like feet. Why?

across my last good nerve

I'm curious about the idea of connection with people. I went to see Across the Universe tonight; I picked up P1* on the way. There were a dozen or so people I know from the dance community there (I had gotten an invite through one of them). When I met these people -- Easter Weekend 2006 -- I felt so connected with them immediately, and felt connected with them until the beginning of this year, but then the connection started fading, and once it started it went quicker and quicker, to the point of feeling like I really don't have much in common with them anymore.

When the movie started, P1 was halfway into my seat with her folded legs, and I didn't really feel like cuddling with her during the length of the movie, so I squeezed into the right two-thirds of my seat. During the movie, a musical, a couple of times she felt the need to keep the beat to a particular song on me, with her leg or hand. It was distracting, so I moved away from her, trying to do so delicately. After the movie, when most of the other dancers had gone to the front of the theater to dance while the credits music played, P1 said, "We have to have that talk that we haven't had yet." She told me that I needn't worry about our relationship being anything more than just a friendship. My interior reaction was, "But I thought we might perhaps have a couple shots of tequila one day and give it a go," but I didn't say that, because I wasn't sure how she would respond, either by expecting such a thing from that moment on or by taking my comment as crudeness. I had told her before the movie that I would read to her my next chapter which I'm presenting to the critiquing group this Wednesday, but the movie was long and L2 half-sang every song in the movie (they were all Beatles songs) in my right ear and all around me were dance community people overreacting to the onscreen events and whispering to each other and passing around the snacks that they'd brought with them, and I just was ready to go home and be alone.

And I wonder why I'm lonely.

orange you glad I didn't say banana?

I went to Houston on Friday and actually enjoyed myself for a change. I think it probably had to do with the fact that I didn't see my family, and because I had some plans that panned out nicely.

I went to take A3* back to the airport. Her visit with us was good; short and exhausting, but good. We took the 290 route to Houston this time; it took a little longer to get there, we arrived in Houston right at 5 p.m., but being that there were two of us, we got to take the HOV lanes all the way through. I've never done that in Houston before; it was cool because they're higher than the highways in most places so it's very satisfying to see all the slow-moving traffic below and the big city above.

I dropped her off at the airport about 5:30 and called J4. He had bought me a ticket to see Howe Gelb at the Orange Show (which I shamefully admitted I'd never been to in all those years I lived in Houston). J4 gave me directions to his friends J5 & V1's house in the Heights, where he was. He met me outside and said, "I love these people and as soon as you step into their house, you'll know why." They moved to Houston from Baltimore in 1991, their house was built 100 years before that, and in the 17 they've been there, they've managed to fill almost every space with the work of self-taught artists; amazing stuff, including early Howard Finster (which is the only artist of that style that I know by name), paintings and signs and bottle cap art and toothpick art and folded-paper art, etc. When I commented that they were almost out of room, J5 said, "But not quite!"

J4 gave me a beer, asked if I was hungry, and when I said, "I will have to eat before the concert," V1 and the two Js starting listing off what they could serve me! V1 made a salad ("Do you mind if I use my mother's vinaigrette?") and J5 did something to some black beans in a pot that made them lip-smacking good. There was Mexican rice to go with it. J4 left to pick up his son from Odyssey of the Mind and V1, J5 and I talked about all kinds of things artistic. They were curious about me, about what I do, and we talked about my novel a bit. V1 went to Rice University a couple of years after one of my characters went there, and I picked her brain about school life. J4 returned and jumped in on the conversation, saying we should go to Valhalla, a bar on campus where they serve cheap bear.

E1 showed up with his camera and a sample of his latest batch of kombucha. It wasn't as good as the stuff a woman in the dance community makes, but it wasn't bad. Shortly, S2 showed up and we were making our plans to go to the Orange Show to see Howe. I forgot to mention that M3 wouldn't speak to me when he and his dad first arrived. J4 insisted that he shake my hand, but it was perfunctory at best. Suddenly, when we were getting the van seats situated so that we could all seven ride in it, M3 decided that he and I needed to sit in the back-back together. It was an odd turnaround, but I was delighted. We dropped him off at Discovery (a gymnasium babysitting place) and when we got there, he insisted that I get out with him. I told him I couldn't, but then, when his parents spotted one of M3's friends arriving and said so to him, he ran over to his friend and said, "Come over here; you wanna see something cool?" The friend of course did. They climbed into the back of the van, M3 pointed at me and said, "Look, he's completely bald!" The friend's eyes lit up. "Cool!" (Later, J4 told me that on the way to J5 & V1's he had told M3 that he would get to meet me, that I was his friend, an artist, and bald -- and that I might let him rub my head, which would bring him luck...)

The Orange Show is worthy of a long description, but I don't feel like it right now (though you can click the link and see what I could never say). It has the feel of a carnival in the middle of a neighborhood. Howe Gelb (also worthy of more) is a quirky musician, adept at guitar and piano, kind of a Tom Waits sound at times, but even more fitting in the carnivalesque atmosphere. When he played the piano, for instance, he would occasionally reach up and pluck the strings inside the instrument, and almost always plucked the right ones. He meandered through cover songs, mishmashing one into another and then a line from a third and then back again; it felt accidental but was well executed every time; and he sang a song he wrote about a train and because it was an open-air concert, took a long time to sing it because he waited for a passing train whistle to accentuate a certain part of the song every time he got to it. In short, he was as weird and delightful as the Orange Show itself.

When we first got there, I ran into a woman who had tried to seduce me way back when I was leaving Houston to go to New York City. I told her I was going there to be with a man, and she said, "So what? Come on! It'll be fun." But I didn't go, because I didn't want to cheat on my new boyfriend, my new life, and because she scared me a bit. I always liked her, and when we passed her and her husband and J4 said, "Hey," I walked over to her and she recognized me right away." Pretty cool.

Plus, I spent most of my time at the show sitting next to E1, talking about boys and things. I can't tell if he's a potential boyfriend -- can't tell if he's interested, can't tell if I am -- but at the very least, I feel like I've got a new friend. We enjoyed each other's company a lot. After we got home at 11:30, J4 suggested the three of us go to Valhalla (for research). We did. It's an interesting little place. Originally, beer was 5 cents, then it went up to a dime and then was a quarter until the 1950s and 50 cents until the '80s. Now it's 95 cents, which isn't really all that cheap, but it's a great place to know about.

The three of us walked across the campus, looked in on the Rice University Gallery, and climbed up on top of a sculpture called 45-degrees (well, actually, it's one-third of a sculpture called 45, 90, 180, but of course, we could only get on top of 45). When we got down, I scraped the hell out of my wrist, which looks like a pretty lame suicide attempt, but I didn't feel suicidal at all this weekend! I did feel a little bit of a let down at one point when we were sitting on top of 45 telling stories, making each other laugh, when E1 said to J4, "He and So-and-So would make a great couple." Sounded to me like E1 wasn't interested. But then, halfway back to Austin, I realized E1 had called to see if I wanted to come over (I missed the call), and then a couple of hours after I got home, he called again to tell me he's coming to Austin next weekend for Maker Faire, asked if he could get me a ticket, and if he can stay at my house. (He knows we have an extra bed...) So, who knows; one step at a time.

J4 led me out to his and M4's warehouse, where M4 & R3 live, where J4 & M4 do their artwork, and where they keep an extra room separate from the living quarters for guests. I stayed there. It's a fascinating house (the banister leading upstairs was made by them and is embedded with glass eyes, all of them with sunshine yellow irises, just for an example). Yesterday morning, I got up and spent an hour or two with M4 & R3 drinking coffee and talking on their back deck. Then I came home completely rejuvenated.

focus on family

I drove to Houston day before yesterday to pick up my friend A3* -- there for a speaking engagement from Nashville. I went a day early because her gig (which I agreed to videotape) was in the morning, and decided it would be a nice gesture to take my mom out for birthday dinner at Olive Garden (her choice; fine by me if she considers that upscale dining). It was such a whirlwind of excitement. My middle sister D2 just found out through her ex-father-in-law that her middle child (her youngest from her first marriage) is pregnant with twins. My mother was all like "Can you imagine?" I said, "How old is D3?" She said, "It's not about her age, it's about her being D3." (She's 20.) I didn't understand, but I find myself just not poking and prodding at the incomprehensible parts because the parts I can comprehend are baffling enough to keep me busy. D3 hasn't spoken to her mother since D2's first husband (D3's father) died and D3 didn't feel like D2 was there for her, "Whatever that means," mom told me.

R2 recently lost both of her children, D4 (yeah, there are a lot of "D's" in my family, and they all sound pretty much alike) had to go to a Christian rehab organization "to get himself on the right track," as my mom put it, in California, and R2 (R1's daughter) decided to move in with her dad, also in California. R2 is bi-polar (when it was diagnosed, my mom said, "Duh!" My mom who shows a lot of the same symptoms but hasn't been diagnosed with is, so she doesn't have to take medicine or the blame for it). R1 lives not far from mom on the Southeast side of Houston with her boyfriend, B2. I asked how R1 is doing with the empty nest. (She had sent out a plea to everyone to please send prayers and letters to D4 so he knows he is loved while he's getting himself on the right track... and to R2, too, "if you want"); my mom rolled her eyes and said, "She's fine..." in a way that really meant "R1 is R1..."

J3 gave me an earful about my mom's older brother C2. J3 loves to gossip, but he tends to put a lot of his opinions about how things ought to be. (He also likes to talk about money, his, mine, A3's even, whom he has never met... When I told him I was in town to pick her up, and told him that she was in Texas for a speaking engagement, he said, "She must make pretty good money doing that, huh?" I said, "I have no idea." He said, "Well, I've known people who do that, and they make a lot of money." He was always confused as to why S1 and I didn't make a lot of money in the music business. But that's J3). I didn't pay much attention to what he said about Uncle C2. But shortly thereafter, my mom told me what was going on with C2. It's really tragic.

C2 is past retirement age, I think, but he can't afford to retire. He had a lover who died of AIDS several years ago (five or more), and he never got over it. But then when his mother died (two years ago) he started slipping deeper into depression. Then he got involved with a 20-something year old crack-addicted bisexual go-go dance he met at a gay bar. This guy stole his credit card and worked out a scam with a convenience store worker to charge gas bought for cash on the card, and the two of them split the money. His card got cut off; C2 found out. He was suddenly in deep water financial. His best friend had also already called my mother to tell her he thought C2 was in trouble... My mother got it out of C2 when she was loaning him money to get him out of deep water. He said he would get rid of the boy, but instead he got rid of the best friend. Apparently, the boy has a huge cock. The last time I talked to my uncle, I took him out for lunch and he told me about the boy (and the cock), and it made me uncomfortable and sad. And I just can't really find my way to being useful in my uncle's life, even though (or because) he has moved three or four times in the past six months, and the boy has sold all of his belongings several times in order to by drugs (presumably), and still C2 won't get rid of him.

What really saddens me is that C2 is now getting beaten up, and my mother's response is, "Okay, I'll give you this money and you can do whatever you want with it, but this kid is gonna kill you, you know that don't you?" C2 told her a while back that he was taking some clothes out of the dryer, fell and cracked three ribs and got a black eye. When he told my mom, she said she didn't have any reason not to believe him, but then two weeks later he called to tell her he fell in the shower and had to get three stitches in his head, and she was like, "What's going on?" He only told her because he needed the money for doctor bills, but it doesn't sound like he's being totally upfront about where all the money is going. What to do? I feel judgmental of my mother for not doing more, but what am I doing? There are a few things I'm not being upfront about regarding my relationship with my uncle....

Today, I got an email from my mom forwarded from an email sent to her by her Jesus-lovin' younger sister. Aunt S2's email message said, "Praise God for a man with backbone!" It had been forwarded to her by her husband, whose email message said, "A Terrific Answer. This is fantastic. And in the middle of a presidential debate. Amen" It was video file of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee answering the question of Creationism vs. Evolutionism.

I came up with this email to send to everybody:

To my well-meaning family:
I am a registered Democrat. Although I don't feel like there are a lot of good choices in the upcoming presidential election, I am in no way swayed by the beliefs of any of the Republican candidates. I am more likely to vote for a Green party candidate or an Independent than a Republican. So, I don't need to receive your thoughts on "good candidates," because I simply don't agree with you.
There seems to be a confusion by some about the separation of Church and State. I am a firm believer in this idea. I don't think religion and politics should be mixed; it confuses the issues, and as much as "religious freedom" (pro or con), is what this country was founded on. So, believe what you want, but please leave me out of your process. Thanks!
With love, jdjb

I haven't sent it yet.

martyr me

About a year ago I "volunteered" to help my friends J2 & A2*, a married couple I met at the dance. He's blind and had brain leukemia (unrelated) and they were going to be in Houston for a couple of months. My job was to spend three days a week there, getting J2 to appointments, getting him meals, taking care of him while A2 came back to Austin for business. This was all while he was in recovery from the bone marrow transplant to take care of the leukemia. It was a relatively simple job for me (and it was a job of sorts because they insisted on paying me), though stressful because of the time commitment, and because of the constant mortality reminder all around.

Since then, I've taken on a smaller role back at home, organizing J2's myriad of medicines into baggies for breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime "servings." A2 is pretty high strung a lot of the time, and she knew that having to take care of this would drive her crazy, so she asked me to do it. I should have known it would be an ongoing project. And I really don't mind it, though sometimes I feel a little put upon by the amount they expect me to remember ("How many bags are left?" A2 asked me in an email, when I was here and she was there with the pills -- mostly it's a juggling game of ordering prescriptions, getting doctors' permissions for refills, picking up other over-the-counter supplements like calcium, Co-Q 10, vitamins, etc., which A2 seems to lose track of, even though I leave her very detailed notes on the progress of the process).

My thought last night when I went over at the end of the day was how to act around these people. I've been feeling depressed lately, but my life in comparison is pretty easy. J2 is trying to get back to his life and is realizing that he isn't as sharp as he once was; he's more aware of these things because of his handicap. I feel close to these people, but I wasn't sure how I would respond to the question, "How are you?" Of course, they could handle me saying I'm depressed. But I didn't feel like I wanted to tackle the next possible (obvious) question: "Why?" And I didn't want A2 to feel the need (like I think she would) to mother me and try to come up with some solution. Really, I wasn't in the mood for any well meaning advice. (I also think about how much she has on her plate, what with J2 and her business and J2's guide dog who has cancer and only a few months to live!)

I didn't know how I would respond. Didn't know if I would allow myself to be cared for. As it turned out, I turned on a cheery face and said I was "Okay," and mentioned to J2 that I had been "in hiding," but I didn't say much more than that. Even though it feels annoyingly like the way my mother deals with life, in this instance, I think it was the right choice.

And speaking of my mother, I'm going to spend the night with her tonight. Her birthday is next week and I'm taking her and J3 to dinner at Olive Garden ("We love that place"). The opportunity came about because S1's and my friend A3 is coming to Texas to give a talk on Diversity to a health care advocacy group (I think that's what it is), and I'm gonna go get her and bring her back to Austin for a visit. She's also having S1 edit some tapes of her talks to help her get more gigs (and to help him pay his bills for the next month), and she got me a paying gig videotaping the other woman who's speaking at the event. I was already planning on taping her part so that S1 could use it -- and was hoping but not expecting that I would get paid enough to at least pay for my gas to and from Houston, twice -- so this worked out nicely.

A3 is going through a divorce, and she is dealing with depression, too, and she and I laugh a lot when we're together, so it'll be good to be around her.

what am?

I've been let down. I've let myself down. At some point I woke up in my 40s all alone. People half my age aren't interested in me, or they are for different things than I hope for, for things I can't offer them. People my own age are just busy.

If I could find my way to being sexually aroused by women, there are a few of them waiting in line (one of whom I'd actually like to be involved with). The men I find myself attracted to are usually straight or otherwise uninterested in me.

What happened? Did I waste all of my sexiness back when? I don't think I was particularly snotty about who or what I was; I think I enjoyed myself, quite a bit, had my disappointments, my thrills, threw some things away that I wish (now) I had held onto, held onto some things that probably weren't good for me.

I emailed an acquaintance recently who, it turns out, is a therapist. She specializes in gender identity issues. Somehow, I feel like my issues of late (or maybe forever) are gender identity. They're definitely Identity issues. I feel like I'm on this little boat in the middle of the choppy sea; it's relatively safe where I'm at, but I don't know what I'll do if a storm comes. (Sounds like an ad for a antidepressant!)

I don't feel like I can talk to anyone. Not even S1. I feel that he doesn't understand something very basic about what I'm going through. I sense his fear and frustration when I say things about sadness or death.

I miss having an audience, I think. That's something that's been coming to my mind a lot lately. What does this mean? Somebody who is fascinated by me?! I don't feel like I have much to offer anyone that will fascinate them. S1 says I don't want to talk about the thing that I spent most of my adult life involved in -- the Act. It's true, I don't, not anymore. I used to eagerly offer that up to people as an introduction (the Act and/or the Relationship) and I kept getting met with confusion or aversion, or alienation.

In the dance community I involved myself in for a solid year (going three times a week to every dance for a long time), people were fascinated by me, interested in me. Then, when the girls started realizing they weren't gonna get anywhere, they started ignoring me; when the boys started realizing I was attracted to them (not acting on it), they started avoiding me. Fuck me!

is it really worth killing yourself over?

1. I've got two brilliant ideas in my head at the same time, crowding each other, trying to develop. In my effort to write them down, they fizzle and my lack of brilliance is proved once again (or twice).

2. I have to stop taking S1's advice. Or anybody's. I don't have the same abilities of conversation or thoughtfulness to pull them off, and I'm left frustrated in real time with an uncomfortable situation.

3. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. As I lay there I thought about death, about suicide, wondered if a person could simply stop breathing, if they could avoid taking the next breath. Is it the functioning of the body that makes this impossible? Or is it the brain? I skipped a couple of breaths, then took one. I don't know if I could do this.

I thought about the most horrific vision of suicide I saw in the pictures I was looking at recently, a person who had sawed themself in half on a band saw, right above the hip bones. The only tough part would be the spine. But it seems like it would be quite painful -- though quicker -- cutting through the flesh and organs. I couldn't do this!

And to think of the noise! That would be the most unnerving part, I think, the high-pitched whir of the metal blade. The lower half of the body was left on the saw bench and the dead upper torso fell to the work table in front of the machine. To find the person who'd committed suicide like this would be awful, having to make your way to the OFF switch.

I'm fascinated by suicide. Maybe because I'm writing a novel about a character who dies. He doesn't commit suicide, not really, but in a way he does, a slow suicide, by letting a man fuck him without a condom. That's a kind of suicide.

Smoking seems to be a coward's form of suicide. Supposedly, smoking less than two cigarettes a day doesn't have an appreciable affect on a person's health, but smoking still seems to be an effort to shorten our time.

Stunt men are suicidal, too, adrenaline junkies, beer drinkers, bull fighters, pot smokers, drug addicts. We're all looking for an ease, a way out doing the things we enjoy.

Maybe I shouldn't be so focused on a dying man in my state. But, hey, writing has been the thing that has made me feel most alive, has helped me cope best with my troubles.

4. My dentist knows I smoke. He's not concerned about my health as much as he is about his workload, I don't think, having to chip and scrape away at the tar building up on my teeth. He doesn't know that I'm more concerned about having a panic attack in his chair, which feels like a much more immediate risk to my life than a cigarette or two.

dream dittie

I slept on and off yesterday. I slept for nine hours last night, which is unprecedented because I normally sleep six or seven. It was a night full of dreams including a repeating two-line refrain from a catchy little tune that I think was part of a radio show I was listening to or was perhaps part of:

Oh, how could I do without you,
When I can't stop thinking a-bout you?

blue state

I felt suicidal this morning. I don't know where it came from; it was like an episode, like having a panic attack but without the panic, coming on slowly then escalating to something unmanageable, then fading away. The whole episode lasted about twenty minutes. During the unmanageable part I had to lie on the floor and cry, shielding my eyes from the bright light and the ceiling fan blades making a vibrating white circle above me.

Right before that, I was thinking I should be back on Cymbalta, should call SIMS, the organization which has helped me find two useless therapists. I had the number on my cell phone screen when I decided to lie down.

Before that I was thinking about my dentist appointment this Thursday, about my critiquing group on Wednesday, about feeling like the least intelligent person of the people I know, about my failed year in college, about the fact that I don't have any friends, none who I could call in that moment to say I felt suicidal.

After the episode I didn't know what to think. I felt a little dazed and confused, thought maybe I should eat. I decided to get up off the floor and have a bowl of cereal, thought I'd better write this down.

When I transcribed what I'd written from notebook to blog, I Googled images for this post and came across a site with dozens of pictures of people who'd committed suicide in a variety of ways -- hanging, shooting, stabbing, drowning -- and I felt like I ought to add that I believe my compassion for my fellow human runs too deep to actually kill myself.

brenda in the fountain

I have a character named Brenda who is modeled after a distant relative named B1* who just died in the last six months from something related to smoking.

I had a dream last night that I was walking through a mall with an older woman, a younger kid (perhaps my Great Aunt M2 -- B1's mother -- and me as a boy) on my left and B1 on my right.

An older couple came up to us asking for a light for the woman's cigarette. Three of us talked to ourselves about the fact that smoking indoors was against the law, that these people must be "foreigners," but the little kid reminded us that in Memphis malls you can still smoke.

We were not in a Memphis mall, but B1 had pulled over to light the woman's cigarette and rejoined us with one of her own cigarettes smoldering. The Great Aunt M2 character and I looked at each other, she shook her head.

B1 almost walked over the edge of a mall fountain and Aunt M2 said, "I told you she was just gonna fall in if she didn't watch out." B1 stopped then took a huge jump into the middle of the non-functioning fountain and I felt exhilarated as I watched her bubbles surface in the middle of the big circle.

B1 came up and climbed out of the other side and laughed that smoky laugh I remember from my childhood. I looked to Aunt M2 and woke up.