the gods don't give a damn

(This entry could also be called "About A Boy, Part Three")

A while back, some women friends suggested I put a notice in the "Shot in the Dark" section of the Chronicle, the listings just after the personals where people say "I saw you at such-and-such a place; did you see me?" I was talking about D, the boy I met nearly two years ago at El Chile, where he worked waiting tables. I had a big crush on him, and he seemed to be at least somewhat interested, but I didn't handle myself in the best way. I wrote a note to him and walked it to the restaurant, but was too shy to walk in and give it to him, so I gave it to a waitress outside the restaurant who was opening up the patio windows. I had practiced writing the note a couple of times before I put it down on the card I'd made for him. But I didn't practice my phone number, and when I got back home, I couldn't for the life of me recall if I'd actually put my number in the note. What an idiot!

So I couldn't go back to that restaurant. (That's the way it works for me...)

So about a year later, I saw him at CampCamp, the monthly lesbian-run talent show that takes place at Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse. He seemed very interested in me, but I was too flabbergasted by having run into him, him seeming so interested, to do anything about it. Somewhere in the conversation I found out that he was no longer working at El Chile ("That was the worst job ever," he told me), but that he was at The Clay Pit.

I went there with a friend shortly after that but he wasn't working. And then the following week, another friend invited me to her birthday dinner which was going to be held at the Clay Pit. I responded to her email, "Ooh! Ask for D to be our waiter!" Which she did, and perhaps we got a D, but not the right D. I don't know the name of our waiter that night, but I found out later that there were two D's who worked at the Clay Pit.

My D was working at the Clay Pit, but he was downstairs. I had had a beer and had the encouragement of two (different from the above mentioned) female friends to get the balls to walk over to him and ask him if he wanted to go out, and he said, "Well, yeah," in a way that sounded to me like he'd been waiting for me to ask about as long as I'd been trying to work up the nerve. But I'm not good at these social situations; I know now that I should have gotten his number, but he asked for mine first, and that seemed sufficient. In fact, I was kind of happy that he had my number instead of the other way around, because then I would have to ponder the proper amount of time to wait before calling him.

He grabbed a pen, said, "Give it to me," and wrote my number on the back of his hand. I had caught him doing his cleaning-up duties, sweeping the restaurant floor; it's likely he did some other, dirtier chores, and he probably washed his hands, and with the dirt away went my phone number. That's the best-case scenario I can think of. A month went by; he didn't call. It didn't bode well. But what could I do?

Friends were full of advice about how to follow up, and eventually I went back to the Clay Pit -- three times: the first because I just happened to be in the neighborhood and had time before a movie I was going to see started (but he wasn't working); the second time, after I called to ask if he was working, was interrogated a bit by the phone-answerer, and then got there to not see him there (though the waiter who had worked my friend's birthday dinner was working, and that's what made me think that perhaps his name was D as well); and the third time, when I got the bad news (I asked the bartender if D was there, the bartender said, "No, I'm sorry, D lost his job two nights ago."

So, maybe the gods are telling me he's a bit flaky. Whatever. I don't care about his employment history. I have dreams about him now and again; in some ways I want to see how this story plays out, in other ways I just want to get the inevitable heartbreak over with!

I forgot that I'd put an ad in the "Shot in the Dark" section of the Chronicle. In fact, I just picked up the current paper today, which will be replaced by next week's in three days (so it's more than half a week old); if somebody were going to respond to my ad they would have by now, right? The thought of my well-intentioned girlfriends a week or so ago at La Dolce Vita over cognacs and cappuccinos was that at least one of his friends would see it and alert him to it. But like I said, I forgot I'd put it in there. I had just noticed that the cover story was about the Museum of Ephemerata, which I took my friend R from Wisconsin to when he was here a while back. So I was pulling the paper apart to send the article to him, when I noticed the "Shot in the Dark" section. And I remembered writing the ad, though I didn't remember writing it quite like this (read carefully and to the bitter end):

DANIEL, WHERE Y'AT?
First it was El Chile, then Clay Pit. You
wrote my number on your hand. Did
you wash it off? I still have a crush
on you. When: Thursday, April 10.
Where: Clay Pit. You: Man. Me:
Woman. #903108

nature rages on

I just flicked a wasp off of the wing of a butterfly. I know I can't save all the creatures in the world. In fact, last week, I was tearing open the web sacks of the worms in the pecan trees outside so that wasps could get at the worms and kill them. Wasps were flying around with baby worms like cotton balls as big as their heads and I thought, "Cool." Nature is so harsh sometimes. The wasp flew to a nearby dutchman's pipe vine (that the butterfly in a different form had eaten a week or so ago) and the butterfly crawled through the chicken wire into the garden and rested there, so close to death; perhaps it had already come to terms with its death and was wonder What happened? Then again, I'm not so sure how much nature on that scale has the ability to wonder at all.

I've been reading Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's very interesting book about...food, basically, and our relationship with the things that become our food. I keep it on the kitchen table and read it mostly over breakfast and lunch, which goes against the Buddhist precept of not multi-tasking. But this works for me; in fact, it seems very related. Just before I got to the chapter where he becomes a "reluctant vegetarian" (near the end, but I'm pretty sure he turns around again in the end), I was at the Alamo Drafthouse watching Rolling Family, a very entertaining film about a dozen family members piling into a homemade pickup camper to travel 750 miles for a family wedding somewhere in Argentina, and I saw on the Drafthouse menu "The Big (Organic) One":

1/3 LB OF ALL NATURAL GRASS-FED, HORMONE-FREE, ORGANIC TEXAS BEEF ON A TOASTED SWEET BUN WITH ORGANIC ROSEMARY AIOLI, TOMATOES, SPRING ONION, ROAST RED PEPPERS, SPINACH AND A SALAD WITH BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE.

I consider myself a vegetarian, mostly for the love of animals -- though I do hate on a fish once in a while, sometimes because I feel the need for a blast of protein, or because someone is feeding me and fish is all that is available -- and I haven't eaten red meat in ten years or more (I can't remember the last time; I do remember being invited by neighbors in NYC for dinner when my then boyfriend J was out of town, and they served me steak... and that was 1989), but because of my current reading material, and because of the description, I ordered the burger. It was tasty, for sure. But I remembered soon after I ate it, and for several hours after, what I don't like about red meat: It makes my teeth feel weird, like there's gristle caught between every last one of them, pushing for space in my mouth and making my gums tickle. And in fact when I flossed that night, the dental floss had a hard time getting in and out of the spaces between my teeth. And I won't go into the smell of my humanure the next day(s) after having the red meat, assuming that's what it was from.

On a lighter (and much healthier) note, I bought a bicycle. Talk about Nature! Ah, I love this bike. And I'm proud to say that I am the first man in Austin to own one, at least according to the Bicycle Sport Shop staff (who all seemed to be jealous of me as I left the store). My maiden voyage was from my apartment to yoga, 1.9 miles away. S and I have been collecting maps on our kitchen walls, and one of them happened to be an old Austin Bike Map, which I took down and found the best route to my yoga teacher's apartment. At two different places on the map, under the street name, it said "(steep)". It should have said, "(no, really!)". Damn, I got my exercise before I even stepped onto my mat, and shortly into my practice, sweat was pouring out of every pore and my mat was squeaky! Of course, that had something (perhaps a lot) to do with the fact that it was 96 degrees outside when I went to yoga, but I loved it. I love it!

I did the ride again the following day, and then last night rode to Dance (3.3 miles, according to Google Maps, but it's probably longer by bike). I love my bike so much, I practically sleep with it! I named it The Professor in memory of my dearly departed friend J, late husband of A. Last Sunday, over dinner at Chez Nous, we talked about Paris, about A and her family's plans to go there in March to spread J's ashes and do some rituals in his honor on the one-year anniversary of his death. I talked about wanting to go along, and A was all for it. But then I bought the bike and decided that I could either afford the bike or the trip. But since then, the office manager -- and friend -- at the company in NYC that I work for said I simply MUST go. And she got me all excited about the trip, so I'll figure out where the money will come from. My goal for the past several years has been to get out of debt -- and that remains my goal -- but as my friend C in Florida says, "Don't let money rule your life." I agree, and I used to say that's why I need to be out of debt, so that money won't rule my life. But this seems like an opportunity not to pass up, so I'll figure out the money stuff later.

Look at The Professor; isn't he a beauty?!

about a boy, part two

Last night, A took J's brother P (and his guide dog, Joy), another friend from the dance, E (whose sight is departing fast), P1 (who has no central vision in one of her eyes from birth), and me (with my bifocals) to a nice little French restaurant downtown, a place called Chez Nous. I'd never been there but knew about it because of M, a waiter there whom I met through G (he's a fan of hers), with whom I was supposed to go out about a year ago or so, but he blew me off... I don't know what the deal was, exactly, but I don't have any major bad feelings about him, just a sort of wistful, unrealized desire -- to know, and to be with him.

P1 arrived at my house at 6:30, she in her "simple black dress" (a must in any woman's wardrobe, as I'm sure I've heard fashionistas say since Dinah Shore had her own TV show). She looked very sexy, to be sure. I would have been all over her, if I was a straight man, but because I'm not, I didn't even reach out for her hand (I think partly as a protest of something that is so acceptable by society between a man and woman in public -- even if one or both of the participants happen to be homos -- but is verboten among people of the same sex, particularly men, even if they are very open-minded men and not necessarily homosexual). Little political gestures like these just come about as a personal protest of myself, not to prove anything to Society at large, or even to my friend in the moment.

M greeted me with a kiss at the restaurant. I'm not sure, but it seemed like he was going for my lips. I hugged him and felt (and heard) his kiss near my ear, but I didn't kiss back. Another protest of sorts. He asked about me, I asked about him. P1, once she knew that he was waiter, perceived that he was fawning over me throughout the meal. He brought out a goat cheese appetizer before we'd even gotten into reading the menus. A, who is a real restaurant aficianado, was quite impressed by what I seemed to be capable of causing to happen. Having had a recent conversation with the two of them at an Italian restaurant about the woes of my heart, they both seemed to be fluttering around me like seagulls at the beach, trying to figure out what was going on-- or better yet what was not going on between the waiter and me.

I prefer vegetarianism -- though I love fish, and I'm sure I would love chicken and other things if I allowed myself to eat them -- but A, knowing that I occasionally eat fish, is always telling me about the fabulous fish dishes at a particular restaurant to which she has invited me. And because she is hosting me, if there aren't any major vegetarian options on the menu, I don't make any kind of a stink about eating the fish. I would rather not, but, like I said, I do like the taste of fish. Last night I had the ruby trout with pecans and a vanilla sauce that at first bite seemed like it would go as well on a stack of pancakes. It was sweet, but not too sweet; and the fish was tender and amazing. I started off with a roasted red pepper bisque (M's choice over the mushroom paté).

We went through two bottles of wine, and then had dessert -- I had chocolate mousse and a cappuccino, which A said were fabulous at Chez Nous, though I've had better. All in all, the experience was quite delightful. I made a vague attempt to see if there was any interest on M's part on the way out by asking if he'd seen the movie The Fall (my current favorite movie and near obsession), since he said his summer is full of work, movies and swimming, and since my summer is full of work and movies. He has seen it, and he loved it (said it was a great antidote to the Hollywood blockbusters he'd been seeing), I'm happy to report, though it left nothing more to our conversation, just a mutual love of a great movie. I guess I could have said something more, but at the heart of it, I had to protect myself from the sad feelings I had a year ago or whenever it was, when it seemed that he was interested in me, promised to call, twice, and didn't. I have to honor myself more than that, I think.

And that's what I told P1 when she called me on her way home from my house. "We didn't talk about the waiter on our walk home," she said, sounding like the seagull and me with a bag of potato chips. We had walked home together, needing to walk off the wine and the food (and the nightcaps at the nearby Hilton that P bought us -- I had a lovely port). We walked through the rough part of downtown, next to the homeless shelter, around the clusters of men and women who were hiding in plain view, one of whom said something as we approached and elicited a yelp from P1. She took my hand and I held back. It was a little awkward as I fought off my internally processing personal political agenda and enjoyed the outward affection of a friend who accepts me for all of my foibles, and loves me at least as much as I love her.

about a boy, part one

Yesterday was boyful, to coin a term. I went to yoga, from which I had been absent for over a week because of a persistent cough that plagues me yet -- I've convinced myself it is a symptom of a mold allergy because of the leaks I've endured in my house. My handsome yoga teacher came over to the front door of his apartment where he holds class and hugged me and welcomed me back. It was a slightly awkward hug, on both our parts, but made me feel special, as usual, in his company.

I had originally been personally invited to join this group of yoga fanatics because I represented some much needed male energy, or so I was told. There was one other on-again off-again male practitioner, but he was barely a "man," having just graduated from high school. (He's E; I'll get back to him.)

Yesterday, there were three other men in the room besides me, one the recent graduate, the second another shaved-headed man I've seen for a couple of weeks, and then a twenty-something man I'd never seen before, but who's obviously been doing this practice of Mysore Ashtanga yoga for awhile, judging from the fact that he can get his feet around the back of his neck and lift himself by his hands. Not me, not yet.

I feel a bit foolish in front of E, not because he is a better yoga practitioner than I (in fact, he seems a lot less flexible, which gives me a bit of perhaps unreasonable confidence about my own practice), but because he isn't yet twenty years old. A boy. And therefore beautiful. In my opinion, everyone in their late teens, male or female (though I'm more attracted to the male species), is beautiful. To make matters more complicated, when I first starting going to this yoga class and encountered E, he smiled at me with puppy-dog eyes and even bowed slightly in my direction when the opening prayer was being recited en masse and our eyes met. A crush. I have lots of crushes. I'm convinced they're harmless, though they do incite occasional bouts of embarrassment.

For example, I got a notion to pluck a purple flower from a plant in the parking lot on the way to my car and put it in the handle of his car after practice one day. Because I'm new to this practice, I usually am the first to finish (since we all go at our own pace under the teacher's, capable, calm and sometimes humorous guidance). A couple of days later, I noticed that the offering I'd made was on E's car dash, which made me feel nice. A day or so later, I plucked two purple flowers and put them on the car, and another day, a white flower, which didn't sit in the handle so well and had fallen to the street by the time I got to my own car. My intention was to make E feel special, an anonymous gesture, though after the three offerings, over a weekend, I decided I should stop such antics before things got "out of control," whatever that might mean.

But when I arrived at class the next Monday, I noticed a piece of white paper flapping in the wind, taped to E's black car door. It was a note, to me:

Dear Flower-Giver,
I'd like to give my thanks, but I do not know who you are. I apologize for not responding sooner. There are several reasons, but are too long to go into detail in this message. I want to tell you but, again, I do not know who you are. Your generosity is appreciated and should you choose to disclose your name and phone number, please write on the opposite side of this message.
Thankfully,
E.

That freaked me out a little bit. It felt like I suddenly knew what "out of control" meant. I ran to S, who is in Indiana visiting his family. He has always had a calm way of looking at things, particularly this type of neurotic thing that I go through now and again. (I like to think that I am able to help him with his struggles as well.)

I wrote to S: I get the feeling he knows I'm the "Flower-Giver," but I don't know about disclosing my identity. I've considered writing a note that says some convoluted thing about feeling a little anxious (or shy) about saying who I am, or trying to explain something about me and telling him I will let him know who I am if he leaves another note, or just ignoring it and leaving more flowers...or not. Or just leaving my name and number on his car with a flower. Even though I have the feeling that he knows it's me, what if he doesn't and it freaks him out in some way, and he ends up quitting yoga because of that, or says something to somebody and I end up having to quit yoga?! Or what if he knows it's me and he's interested in me in some deeper way ("I want to tell you..."); do I really want to go down that path??? Is there some way to go there without it eventually becoming uncomfortable? Or is there some way to get closer without going there? I wish obvious Right and Wrong made themselves apparent to me, but they have not. I feel a lot of societal angst about what if, what if, what if... Even if it's just getting together to talk. That would be very nice, I think. I think it's possible to be friends with someone so much younger; I think it would be okay -- good even. But I fear what people would think or say...

And there's the rub. Fear of what others might think; that old suitcase. More a fear of having to defend myself, or not defending myself and having to live with it in some way. (etc.)

S didn't respond to the email, but soon after that we were having an online Chat, and I brought it up. Me: Did you read my email? He: About flower boy? Me: I guess you did! He: !

His response was exactly what I needed: I think because it's become so complicated in your mind, what you might do is just let the flower gesture be was it was. Just drop it and let it exist as the original gesture, which was to do something sweet and anonymous. So don't respond to his note...but don't be afraid of your affection for him in real life, let that be what it is apart from the flower thing.

So I did. Though perhaps I could have dropped "the flower thing" a little more completely than I did. A couple of days later, E was parked behind me, and I drew a smiley face in the dirt on his car door, wishing right away that I hadn't, but to erase it would have made a big mess on the door, which probably would have been creepy, so I let it be and backed off.

Early last week, I got an email from someone in the class (to me and E) about Wednesday being a "Moon Day." Mysore (and perhaps all Ashtanga) practitioners don't do yoga on days with a full moon or a new moon. I hadn't been to yoga at all in the week before that, and planned on going on Thursday, but didn't, again because of the cough. But I hijacked E's email address from the one sent to the two of us to ask E if he was going to yoga on Sunday (a morning class I've wanted to go to since I first heard about it but had not yet attended), and if he was, if he would like to go to Casa de Luz -- a macrobiotic restaurant I love -- with me after class for brunch. He responded to say that Casa de Luz was his favorite restaurant.

So we went. I awoke very early Sunday morning, had to make myself go back to sleep a couple of times to get enough rest! I guess I was excited about my "date." But I didn't want to give it too much energy. Truly, my intention for having lunch with E was to get to know him better, to take away a bit of the power of this "crush" I had on him. (I almost wrote "inappropriate crush," but that's something I choose to strike from my vocabulary.)

We had a nice conversation, very informational and mutually interesting. Then he said:

I'll let you in on something. I have a secret admirer. It goes like this: One day I went out to my car where we all park our cars in front of M's, and there was a flower in my door handle. And I thought, 'Oh, how sweet,' and that was that. And then some time later, there were two flowers. I didn't know what to do. I've never had anything like this happen to me before. I told M about it, and he had some good advice. I put a note on my car door with four pieces of tape, and when I came out of yoga, the note was gone, but no response. And then, after that, somebody drew a smiley face in the dirt on my car. I don't know if it's somebody from my high school who lives in the neighborhood, or somebody from practice...

It felt very open-ended, like he was waiting for some revelatory response from me. I felt queasy as I tiptoed through a response, not wanting to implicate myself, but also not wanting to lie to him. (Fortunately, he didn't ask me outright if it was me.)

During brunch, E got a call from his sister, with whom he said he has a very close relationship. He left the table for the bulk of the conversation, was hanging up when he returned, saying, "I'll call you back... His name is JDJB... No!" Then he laughed, which in my mind was his response to his sister asking if I was the secret admirer he surely had told her about...

I mentioned a boyfriend in our conversation (about writing, inspirations, my one-act play "august," which I'd written for my first NYC boyfriend, and which was the seed for the novel I'm now writing), so I felt like I was being as open as possible with him. But it still felt a bit dishonest, or at least creepy. I felt a little creepy.

It wasn't wholly a bad thing. I realized that my attraction to young men isn't so much about me being a pervert as it is about me having a wounded soul, about things that happened to me in my younger days. I was thinking yesterday morning about writing a novel that I've thought about before in various ways, about a boy who is molested and then becomes a man who is a molester... but with a happy ending. I've decided that my attraction to people like E -- who seem more often than not to be very spiritually grounded men -- is an attempt on my part to heal.

My dear sweet friend M called yesterday afternoon from Virginia. She's on a four month long performing tour. I called her a week ago or so because I was missing her, and she was returning my call. Eventually, the conversation came around to everything I've just been writing about. She said, "You keep saying that you feel creepy, or you think what you're doing is creepy, and you don't have to do that. There isn't anything creepy about what you're doing. There isn't anything creepy about love." I told her about my sexual relations with a couple of uncles as a kid, and her response was pretty much along the same lines as S's -- support, non-blame -- which gave me a lot of confidence in M. She wondered aloud how difficult it would be for either of us had I told him I was his secret admirer. She said, "He's old enough to receive and process that kind of information."

But still, I'm scared. It's okay. Writing about it makes it better. Makes it okay.

i'm so azure

My mom gave S and me a stupid clock with an indoor/outdoor thermometer reading, which I moved to over my desk when S went out of town for the summer with the intention of keeping myself from overheating. I don't mind the heat so much, but sometimes it's a little hotter than it should be in here, and I think it's making me ill. I decided that when the indoor temperature hits 90, I would turn on the a/c. It usually stays about five to ten degrees "cooler" (relative term) in the house than outside. A couple of days ago it got up to 104 (outside), and I turned the a/c on, but it kept flipping the breaker switch, which meant I had to keep going outside to the back corner of the house to flip it back on again. It was 88 in the house when I gave up. 88 isn't so bad.

Yesterday, I was going to go to Dance, but got involved with work, and then with jumping into internet rabbit holes and before I knew it, it was nine o'clock (the Dance ends at 9:45). And it was 92 degrees inside. I was going stir crazy, and I was hungry, and because I didn't want to heat anything up, and because I didn't want to eat cold cereal, I decided to head over to the Dance space and see if anybody was going over to Bouldin Creek Cafe after. There was some drama at the Dance -- which is part of the reason I don't go as much anymore; it has to do with the current president of the board and his decisions and his way of communicating and the struggles he and the other board members and many of the Dancers are having, being that they're a bunch of hippies.

LR, for one, who is like the Mama of the Dance, and has been setting up and breaking down the space for thirteen years, was asked to provide a job description, which she took as being a little too corporate for her soul, and so she quit. So the president immediately hired a new person to do her job. LR showed up to Dance last night, early, in time to set up, and found out that she had been replaced. I arrived at the end of the closing circle, saw her lying on the floor, asked how she was, and got an earful.

A asked if I wanted to go get a bite to eat. I did. I suggested Bouldin; A counter-suggested Polvos, because LR likes it. I didn't see any reason to contradict. Seven of us ended up at Polvos, including three Bs (one of whom now goes by F, the other two I'll refer to as B1 and B2), LR, A, and a woman I met recently named P, a beautiful woman, gentle, hippie-like, with a generous smile.

The gossip continued around the issues with the Dance -- which was a bit tedious to me. I asked B1 who the woman was, he told me we'd been introduced a week ago. I didn't remember. When she went to the restroom, B2 went as well, and B1 said, "He just slapped her on the butt!" He seemed a little offended. When P returned, B1 said something about it. She said, "I know; I hope he got from the disgruntled sound I made that that wasn't acceptable behavior." (I always liked B2. Right before I met P1, she was dating him. She says now that she shudders -- I think that's the word she used -- every time she thinks about the episode of dating B2. I didn't understand. But later, when he was the first to leave, he pulled P over the table to him and kissed her on the cheek, which wasn't completely unacceptable behavior, but did seem a little odd, so maybe it really was, to P.)

Anyway, I asked B1 if he and P were dating. He said, "We're hanging out," which I took to mean that's the precursor to dating. Shortly after that, when she was back at the table, A said, "So when are you performing again, JDJB?" And P turned to me and said, "Did you do CampCamp?" She saw both of my performances there -- the Blood of the Lamb Beet Juice thing and the May Day Human Maypole thing. But what was most interesting was when she said: "I'm queer too!" I could see a drop in B1's face, could feel his energy change severely. He didn't admit it right away, but later, it came up when we were in the parking lot. I told him that's exactly the way I feel over and over when I find out that guys I'm attracted to are straight. His response: "Well, I think she's everything..." I wanted to say, "Yeah, and I sometimes think you're 'everything,'" but I didn't. I just smiled and let him have his little fantasy. It was useful to me to see how he struggled with that, struggled against that very obvious information: "I'm queer!" How he kind of told himself it wasn't exactly what it sounded like.

I had a coconut margarita, which was tasty and strong and loosened my tongue and wit -- though around some people (B1 being one of them) I'm known for being funny, there's some sort of incentive, or some sort of energy. The food was okay at Polvos; the service was horrible. A said she's had that experience there before (except she thinks the food is great).

After we said our goodbyes in the parking lot, I drove toward home but stopped at Chain Drive, because it was Wednesday night and that's the night they have bands play, and I remembered in the back of my mind that Chainbow (a band that played at CampCamp on May Day) was playing. Indeed they were.

A week earlier, I had performed as a dancer in G's improv disco unit, and there were maybe ten people there. Last night the place was packed. I rolled a cigarette in the truck so I could go stand on the Chain Drive patio and enjoy it (so I would have something to do), and I saw S1 and J and R and S2, queers that I've met through G. I walked up to S1 and said hey, had a brief conversation with him. He was polite, but there just wasn't any real connection there. J was standing close by; a real cute little homo studying to be a nurse. He was at R's pancake breakfast birthday party and I felt like there was some sort of connection there, but last night he didn't seem to even recognize me. S2 looked really fucked up, kind of squinty-eyed and swaying, and she was standing across from R, who I went up to, hugged, and we had a conversation, which was a little warmer than the one I'd had with S1, but I felt like I had nothing interesting to say. I feel like I have a totally uninteresting life. There's only so many times you can say to somebody that you're writing a novel before they start saying, "So, what are you up to, just writing?" Yeah, just writing. (And not even that for the last week or so, this goddamn chapter sixteen...)

So then the band was starting. I went inside. They really aren't my cup of tea. They're loud and not real melodic, and I'm just an old fart because all the mostly-lesbian audience members were bopping and laughing, spewing their drunkenness right back at the drunk foursome onstage, banging away, keeping a relative beat, stopping occasionally to start over because somebody fucked up a song...

I looked around the crowd, the crowd looked through me. A fat girl looked past me and smiled as she did so; I took that as the one most real connection. The cute boys all seemed too young for me. There was a short-haired man in tight jean shorts and motorcycle boots playing pool; he was nice to watch, but he looked at me sideways and made me feel like I was being perhaps inappropriate.

Then I saw a tall man with long blond hair. He sized me up as he passed by. Then he followed some people out to the patio. I bought a beer (forgetting I'd had a margarita already, and I don't like to mix alcohols), and it was just a Corona, which isn't the kind of beer that I would normally drink, but, believe me, it was the best choice...and it cost $4.25 (which makes it really not the best choice)! I went outside to where the tall blond man had gone. He was standing in a cluster of five guys by the fence, all but him smoking. I'd already had my one cigarette and didn't really want to go roll another. Next to me were two guys involved in a cynical conversation. Close by, a group of six or so were sitting at the built-in pond; over there was a picnic table of four bears most likely making snide remarks about the other groups; at another spot, a group of three; and at the back corner, a couple tables of mixed gender queers.

The tall blond man was across from the pool player, but next to a rough looking guy. Then suddenly, they were kissing. I couldn't hear their conversation, so it looked completely out of the blue. One moment, they're standing around with three other guys, and the next they're sucking face. That doesn't happen to me. In one way I want it to, and in another, I'm completely opposed to that kind of non-genuine connection. Not to say these guys didn't have a genuine connection, but it seemed pretty random. Fifteen minutes later, they were at it again, and then after a brief pause, headed out of the bar together most assuredly to go have sex. The rough guy sized me up as he passed, and then stumbled off of the sidewalk. I thought to myself perhaps if I hung around this place long enough, got drunk enough, somebody would come along and suck on my face and let me take them home. It's a conundrum because I have this desire for an intimate connection, but I want it to be genuine, and a bar doesn't seem like the right place to find that.

Though the Dance isn't really the right place either since I'm the only homo there.

I came home feeling despondent. I have been thinking about celibacy a lot lately. If I could take that desire out of my life, I think I would be a lot better off. It's like getting out of debt to relieve a certain amount of mental stress; celibacy would possibly go a long way to relieve me, too. Other than masturbation, I am celibate. I haven't had sex in over a year. I haven't masturbated that much recently, either. But I got home last night and felt like it was the only thing that would make me feel better. It didn't. I shouldn't have mixed tequila and beer.

I had a dream last night that I was in a big city -- probably New York, but it felt like Paris (though I've never been there) -- I was with my immediate family; it was time to leave, to catch a plane back home. But there was news of a great tragedy outside. When I got outside, police and firemen were everywhere, searching for the perpetrator of this great tragedy. There was controlled mayhem in the streets, everybody walking briskly on the sidewalks, darting behind buildings, in and out of alleyways.

It turned out the perpetrator was a little boy wearing an over-sized policeman's jacket and hat and carrying a huge bag that looked like a two-dimensional jack-o-lantern. They caught him walking down a rickety staircase. They took him away. The staircase separated an upper sidewalk and a lower sidewalk. I was on the lower sidewalk; I started climbing the rickety staircase to get up to where the police with the boy had been, and the stairs started falling apart, coming loose in my hands, splintering and falling away under my feet.

I've had diarrhea since the week after S left town, and for the last five days or so, a cough when I take deep breaths . P1 said maybe I should go to a doctor. I don't want to go to adoctor. I don't want to take medicine; I don't want to fight for life; sometimes I'm okay with it coming to an end.

inevitable

A few nights ago I was sitting on the porch, fretting about the wasps, perhaps, when I saw what looked like a feather in the concave end of the rolled up matchstick bamboo curtain hanging on the front side of the porch. I went to pull the feather and it pulled back! It was a sparrow, sleeping. I let it be. The next day, it was gone, but was back again the next night. How sweet! Tonight, I was sitting on the porch, feeling sad, wishing the sparrow was there to make me feel that sweetness again.

I was feeling sad because today I killed a little bird, quite by accident; the image of it keeps playing in my mind. I went to M&J's to show them the drawings of the compost toilet for the new space we'll soon be building on their property, and also to celebrate what M called Father's and Uncle's Day. J was fixing a broken gas line when I got there. M and I shared a beer and J came in soon thereafter to join us. P was watching a movie and wasn't paying much attention to us at first, which was okay, but M encouraged her to show me the three frogs she'd won yesterday; I never did get a story about where or how she'd won them. She's usually more animated. Maybe it was the heat...

They weren't real frogs -- they were red stuffed animals with black spots, cute -- not that it would be such a surprise for P to have frogs. In fact, later on, she showed me two tadpoles in a glass of water she was watching grow. "We don't know yet if they're frogs or toads," she told me in her wise six-year-old way. They have lots of real animals around the Rogge Ranch: a pot-bellied pig named Tinkerbell, a rescued boxer named Bones, and a little blue parakeet named Wendy. "My little blue chicken," M calls him (most likely a him, according to the blue marking over his nose).

J was drawing pictures of the windows he's working on for a movie that will likely/hopefully find their way into the Rogge Studios where S and I will live in the not too distant future. Wendy was on the table, chattering away (his latest phrase: "Here, kitty, kitty!") He was flying from shoulder to shoulder, biting at the pen J was drawing with, being a (cute) nuisance. A short while later, I saw him riding on Tinkerbell's back, happy as he could be.

It was time for me to go; I had plans to go to A's for a dinner party with an eclectic group of people. J asked if I had fifteen minutes to go to the shop with him so he could show me some of the props, and I was happy to oblige. I was getting ready, putting my glass away, I walked across the kitchen toward the sink and stepped on what I thought was a squeak toy -- because it squeaked. I didn't think anything of it for a second, until I looked back and saw Bones licking a splayed out Wendy on the floor. M jumped up, "Bones, no!" And then it hit me. I had stepped on the bird.

M picked Wendy up, he flopped around a little bit and then died fairly quickly in her hands (which is the only "good" part of the story). Fuck! P wasn't right there at the time, but with all the commotion, she was over with us quickly. "What happened?" M didn't tell her I stepped on Wendy, she said Bones was in the way and Wendy got stepped on. I couldn't say anything. I cried. M&J both tried to tell me that it was inevitable. And maybe it was inevitable, but why did it have to be me?

J said Wendy has gotten out of the house four times, and he was surprised every time the bird came back. M said she was surprised Bones never snapped at Wendy. None of this made me feel better. M told P to hug me, she did, and she said, "I want to go outside." That's when she showed me the tadpoles.

They got a shoe box with colorful Disney characters on it, put in a piece of blue velvet and Wendy on top with some flowers from the yard, a toy butterfly; they took some pictures. I found the shovel by the house where J had been digging up the gas line and went to the graveyard near where the Rogge Studios will be, where Junior's body, and Mookie and Brutus' ashes are -- all boxers -- as well as the ducks that got killed by a raccoon and the dead squirrel they found in the duck pond. I dug into the hard ground and while we were having our little memorial service, P's playmate I and her parents arrived. I was relieved that P had something to occupy her for the rest of the day. But she wasn't nearly as upset and M and I (me) were.

I went to the dinner party, which was nice; I made a beet greens and kale quiche; there was green salad and basil tomatoes and a rice dish, two hens, et cetera, et cetera. I felt a little numb but continued through the meal okay. On the way home, I felt this weariness that I guess comes with mourning. It's the feeling I've had when I've been to a funeral, which I always associated with lots of crying. I cried a little, not a lot, over Wendy, mostly because I didn't want to completely fall apart in front of P, though it would have been easy to do. So I think now that that feeling isn't so much about wearing yourself out crying, but more just the heaviness of death.

bugs

My cordless keyboard for my PC died last night, just as I was gearing up to finish a transcript for work that appeared on the time sheet I turned in yesterday. What a bother! I haven't had the thing for six months, but of course I don't have the receipt or the box or any paperwork on it, and I'm not positive of where I got it, so I don't know if the store will take it back. Most likely I'll have to buy a new one. I was thinking about that last night; there are very few things that I buy new. Groceries, yeah; a blender; electronics. The last two are generally all made in China. And normally I would be up early (as I was today) and typing away on a transcript -- most of my best work is done early in the day -- but the electronics stores all seem to open at 10:00 a.m. That's two hours away. What'll I do? I watched some previews on imdb; there are some movies I wanna see (or see again), among them the new Hulk movie, The Ice Storm, The Anniversary Party, Eyes Wide Shut. I don't really know why I want to watch Eyes Wide Shut; I went to one of those links that appears on my gmail page that said "Tom Cruise - 25 Years" which is a site dedicated to all the power, all the glory, all the humor the handsome little Scientologist has brought us for the past 25 years. I'm not a fan of Tom Cruise the person, not really that big of a fan of his movies, though I do love his ex, Nicole Kidman, in just about anything she's in, and it seemed to me that Eyes Wide Shut was under-represented in the movies of his career. Perhaps that because it's not a very good movie, or maybe it has something to do with their relationship. Whatever. It looks interesting enough to spend $1.50 on a rental. This was where my rabbit-holing on the internet got me last night after my keyboard died.

I had two very fine offers of other things to do last night, but no, I was gonna be a good boy and work. M and R, friends from the Dance, have been staying at A's house (she doesn't like the house being empty since J and his dog Dillon died, and M needed a place to stay, and then R showed up on the scene). A's niece, son and his girlfriend are in town as of yesterday, so M and R didn't have a place to crash (I don't guess -- I'm sure they would've found somewhere to go), so I offered to let them stay here since S is out of town. They were grateful. And they're cool, mellow young guys -- chill, as the kids might say. They came over yesterday evening and we sat around talking for a couple of hours; it was so laid back I didn't realize so much time was passing by. They kept talking about going to see some band play at Waterloo Ice House, then we'd get involved in a new subject. R had my keyboard out and was tickling the faux ivories; he's an amazing musician, having an undergrad degree in music and computer science. When Mr. Rogers came up in the conversation, he quickly switched what he was playing to play the "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" theme, to a tee. They asked if I wanted to go see the music with them, but I declined, seeing as I was going to work. They're also night owls, and I wasn't sure I wanted to get caught out with them around the time I wanted to be home in bed. (That was a good thought because they rolled in at 3:45 a.m.)

I sat on the front porch with a cigarette (before I started working) and listened to a message from P who was going to Shady Grove with friends to hear Guy Forsythe, whom I love; she invited me along, but I left a message back to her saying that I was in for the night, getting ready to work. Yawn... I didn't really want to go out anyway because I had been out late the night before, dancing for G's new "improv disco band," she's calling it Gretchen's Disco Plague (which S says it sounds a little too reminiscent of AIDS with "disco" and "plague" so close together). It was at the Chain Drive, the leather bar down by the creek that S goes to much more regularly than I do -- that's where he gets the good pot. It was a fun show, but I felt a little sick to my stomach afterwards, because I danced non-stop for an hour in a tight-fitting sequined twirler onesy, my very warm fuzzy orange pants and yellow rubber wig. I ended up taking off the wig early in the performance, and I took off the pants for the last song. I think I hold my breath a lot when I dance, that may have had something to do with the stomach ache. There was a cute gay boy talking to G's musical partner in this band -- a straight man -- but I needed to get home and get out of my clothes and take my contacts out; all the sweat in my eyes was bothering me.

Oh, and I've got critter issues! For the last couple of days I've been pulling caterpillars off of the dutchman's pipe vine that covers the trellis in front of the porch (or used to); dozens and dozens of the beautiful burgundy- to lemon-colored critters. I've been throwing them in the wild side of the yard (the organized weeds), but I don't know if they're surviving over there; there isn't a lot of viney type stuff in that side of the yard, but I want them a little farther away from the garden than they currently are. I have no intention of killing them; if they finish off what they're working on and make their way into the garden, so be it; I just can't imagine killing them because they're eating my food...

There are wasps all about as well. The most menacing nest is two feet from the front door, which I often have propped open a few inches to let the cat in and out. Last summer I was good about knocking the nests down with a long pole. Somebody at the Dance told me about that; it doesn't kill them (probably pisses them off, if that's really an emotion wasps experience); they usually come back to the same spot and try to rebuild, but if you knock the nest down enough times, they go elsewhere. There were two nests over S's door, which I've ignored as well (out of sight, out of mind). M asked last night if they could use the back door so they wouldn't bother me, and when I told him about the nests and my intention, he got the pole and knocked the bigger of the two down; a flurry of wasps danced around the back screen door while R and I watched M disappear into the darkness toward the front of the house.

The problem with the nest on the front porch is that it is on the blade of a (non-working) fan, inside the grille, so the pole can't get to the nest to knock it down. I could take a waterhose to it (another effective method), but the neighbors have all kinds of furniture and paperwork, and now parts of a computer on their side of the front porch, which would be hard to avoid with the spray. I would just let the wasps be except that a couple of nights ago three wasps made their way into the house; they were just hanging out on the wall and ceiling and computer. They're mellow critters; I was able to take a plastic juice jar and put the opening -- which was barely bigger than them -- over them, walk it down a little to annoy them into flying into the bigger space, cover the opening, and take them outside, one at a time. The catch-and-release program. My mother would make fun of me, to be sure. Whatever.

Speaking of my mom, she was supposed to be visiting this weekend, but her aunt died yesterday so she had to postpone the trip. I was looking forward to the visit, but also am quite okay that she's not coming. We do just fine long-distance. She was only going to be here for two days, and she would be here alone, so it probably would have been fine -- fun even -- but little things get under my skin sometimes, like perhaps her insistence that I kill the wasps around the house or coat the vines and garden in pesticides to repel caterpillars, or not liking this restaurant or that that I decided to take her to.

S is in Indiana with his family right now. I think it's a total of three months, which he's mostly enjoying (though there are naturally some annoyances that I've heard about). Three months! I spent six weeks living with my mom before I moved to Austin, and my meditation practice really took off during that time!

An hour to go before I can go to the store and replace my keyboard. In looking for pictures of the caterpillars I've been tossing into the weed side of the yard, I came across a site that sounds like it's saying they're not so bad, that they only eat dutchmen's pipes, often down to the ground, but the plants survive because of their strong root systems. I'm not sure I would be around to see them replenish themselves (since we're planning a move to M&J's side of town when our container housing is built), but I will likely see the pipevine swallowtail butterflies that come from these caterpillars later this summer. And what beautiful bugs they are!

orange crush

Here's what I can do to avoid working on chapter sixteen: I can blog.

I'm afraid this is gonna be all over the place. I've been trying to encapsulate last night in my brain since I was in the middle of it, and I feel incapable. Molly Venter (pictured) performed a CD release party last night at a tiny little yoga studio on Kerbey Lane. I got a call earlier in the day to see if I could round up some extra chairs. I called on A, who loves to throw parties and has that kind of stuff, and got eight from her.

When I arrived at 7:30, a handsome blond man was loading chairs into the room from a little shed in the yard. He spotted my penny-dotted truck and said he had to have a closer look. He had a German accent and a gentle way about him. His name is R. He said the truck looked like a "belt animal." He couldn't think of the word in English: in German, it's Gürteltier. Come to find out, he was talking about an armadillo. I said, "You have armadillos in Germany?" He said, "No, but we have a word for everything."

He is a friend of the owner of the studio and appointed himself door-watcher, trying to keep the door closed as much as possible to keep the air conditioning in. Since I already had a crush on him, I appointed myself as his assistant. It was fun greeting people, and R and I were making each other laugh a lot.

Early on, he said something about liking big boobs, so I realized that he was not my type (or maybe I should say I'm not his type, seeing as how I don't have boobs at all). That was okay; I called it a "Flash Crush," and made mention of a boyfriend I had in a story I was telling him. So we knew the score and things went on from there.

The little yoga room filled up and the owner told money-taker arm band seller L that we could only hold X amount in the room (I think it was around 70), and when she sold all the arm bands, L told us to put a sign on the door saying the show was SOLD OUT. R jumped on this, made a sign out of a business card, stuck it on the door and locked us inside. But there were still people driving up, and a half dozen people or so wanting to get in.

A couple of songs into the show, people were knocking on the door to the rhythm of M's songs. It was weird. And then they went to a side door -- a couple got in that way, but then I think the owner locked that door. Then the people outside the door R and I were "guarding" opened the window right next to it. I raised the blinds so they could see in. R got agitated by this for awhile. "The air conditioning!" I told him I couldn't close the window on the people because they were mostly my friends out there (and M's friends, too), including A who had loaned us her chairs! Eventually we let four or five more people in, and others were happily gathered around the window.

During the break, R and I followed J out to his car and got high, really high, it was strong shit! I didn't think about the fact that I normally wouldn't get high in a situation like that, probably because I was following my crush out to the car -- even though I already knew he was straight.

When we came back for the second half of the show, I had a couple of emotional and creative breakthroughs, as simple as thinking I wanted to write something inspired by M's songs the way P.T. Anderson was by Aimee Mann for Magnolia. And then I had this idea to get S to write a song inspired by each chapter of my book and have M perform/record it. That would be nice.

But I was having other, much deeper, hard to explain things going on. I was really high and was coming down from the current useless crush and M was singing "Playing For Keeps," and the lyrics were connecting to what I was going through in a very real and bittersweet way. The next song was "Hello Fear," and I don't know if it was during that song or the next one that I noticed that E was singing, or trying to sing along with every word. And I had a sudden realization about E.

I haven't mentioned E yet. I met E awhile back at the Dance. He was one of my earlier useless crushes. We hung out once, I gave him a ride somewhere where a bunch of other Dancers were meeting; his shirt was sweaty from having been dancing and I happened to have one in the truck that he could wear. I dropped by his house unannounced once and it wasn't bad or anything, just a little awkward, I guess. I was going to Dance and dropped by to see if he wanted a ride. I knew he was straight; it wasn't about that. It was really about needing a friend at the time. But it kind of played out, I don't know why, and we stopped hanging out; maybe he didn't like my vibe or something.

Shortly after that was the soup party that S and I threw (a year ago about). I remember E being there and being very animated for a group of people who were piled up on my bed. I didn't think much of it at the time (perhaps because I was recovering from that crush or something). But last night at M's show, hearing E singing along, I suddenly realized that hE and I are very much alike, a little awkward sometimes but also inventive and creative and animated.

What's interesting about E has to do with D, who is a friend of L -- the woman who introduced me to the Dance. The first time D came to Dance, I kind of latched onto him. He was sweet, we had nice conversation. This was back when everybody used to go to LR's house on Friday nights after Dance. I encouraged D to go and once there sat at his knee and fawned over him. He didn't seem particularly put off. I mentioned to L after that -- after I found out that he was her friend -- that he was cute. Her response: "Hm, I don't know if he swings." Which still strikes me as a weird response. Maybe she's more in tune with my energy than I care to admit, but, really, I wasn't asking her to set us up or anything.

After that exchange, the next time I saw D (and I'm not saying the two are connected), he avoided looking at me. I wasn't imagining it; it was very obvious and very weird. That was months ago, and still to this day he hasn't looked me in the eye.

Some time after that, I saw D and E dancing together. And they arrived at M's show together last night. (For the uninitiated, straight men regularly dance together at the Dance; in fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the only regular Dancer who is a gay man.) I hugged E by default; it seemed right, I didn't know what else to do. No biggie. D avoided looking at me; whatever. They've found in each other what I wanted with each of them...well, maybe slightly less, but it's what they wanted with me, perhaps. Or maybe D is afraid of his attraction to me; I seriously think that straight men are drawn to me, "attracted" to me, but most of them probably know where their affections lie and so it doesn't end up being a problem for them (usually just for me), but sometimes it makes men uncomfortable.

When E passed me on the stairs last night, he squeezed my shoulder, which I thought was a sweet gesture.

After M's concert, R followed a group of us to Kerbey Lane Cafe and it was lots of fun, lots of laughs, and good strawberry pancakes.

brud to the blain

I'm having a watermelon smoothie. I'm trying to use up the leftovers from the potluck I had a couple of nights ago. Earlier today I made myself an arugula, black olive, feta omelet with white wine (I put the wine in the omelet, I didn't have a glass on the side!). The eggs and the feta were the only ingredients that weren't leftovers from the party.

My friend M is going on a four-month performing road trip (her myspace page) and I suggested a going-away party. She said that two of her girlfriend's birthdays were on the same night, so it became a bigger party than that. It wasn't out of control, though someone showed up with a standard sized poodle and freaked out my cat (or maybe it was just me!)

I made a salade niçoise from my favorite and most used cookbook (Nikki & David Goldbeck's American Wholefoods Cuisine), and I made my Aunt Melba's Dream Chocolate Cake with black onyx dutch process cocoa S and I get from a little spice shop in Denver, Colorado (we order it); it made the cake and icing so black that I wanted to put yellow stripes down the middle of it (longways) to make it look like a piece of highway; I mentioned this to P when she called to ask if I needed anything for the party; I told her birthday candles. She brought candles and a can of yellow icing! It looked cool. She also brought a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate finding out that she had gotten a full-time job that day. She came a little early, and so did A (who also brought a celebratory bottle of pink Prosecco -- or maybe it was P who brought the pink; anyway there was a bottle of white and a bottle of pink) and the three of us had a toast and a nice quite conversation until guests started arriving.

B came late and stayed late-late. He and I were sitting on the front porch drinking beer and talking until 3 a.m. It was nice (it was nice to have started and ended the party in the same way, having a nice conversation with friends). B is one of those guys from the Dance Group I attend on whom I once upon a time had a crush. (Okay, maybe I still do.) He knows this. He's straight, as are the majority of the men who go to the Dance, though they seem to be mostly in touch with their feminine sides -- which is sometimes confusing for a homo like me.

B and I found out we have a similarity in our lives: religion. He was raised Jehovah's Witness; I was raised Assembly of God. We both got out of it at about the same age (though he's nineteen years younger than me), but for some reason he seemed to fare better in the aftermath. Not that I'm totally fucked up, but I think I'm a lot more neurotic. Probably the homo-factor.

The conversation came around to that, to my fears about peoples' perceptions of me, about being judged for being gay and therefore not wanting to let too much of myself out. B encouraged me to be who I am (which sounds cliché, and those weren't the words he used), said that being my more authentic self would allow me to have deeper relationships with others, not just in Dance, but in the world in general. I know that's true. I asked him if he ever saw a woman across the dance floor and had a sexual thought about her. He said yes. I was glad to hear that because it seemed to give me permission of some sort. I told him that I have to hold myself back, though, because I have the urge to go sit in somebody's lap or kiss them... He said, "How funny would it be to go up to somebody and say, 'I wanna sit in your lap!" I guess it's the kind of group that could handle that sort of a thing. But I'm a'scared. I've got this self-defeating thing about not wanting push myself, my style onto people, holding back, not wanting to be a big fairy, not wanting to be a faggot, not wanting to be the labels I was given back in the painful days of my youth...the scars are deep.

Last night, I went to Dance because B was facilitating for the first time (the warm-up, another person facilitated the bulk of the night). I had a great dance. It was wild and I felt really connected to myself, to my past. I felt wide open. At closing circle, inspired by what B and I had talked about the night before, I said: "Some of you may wonder why I'm such a great dancer." (giggles) "Well, from the eighth grade to the 12th grade, I was ostracized by my schoolmates; I was having a hard time coming to terms with the religion I was being raised in; I was having a hard time dealing with my sexuality, with being different from everybody else. But when I went to school dances, I shone." It felt good to say that, and when I thanked B for allowing me to be neurotic and always being encouraging, he said he was happy to hear me speaking. He asked how it was for me. I admitted when I got to the part about SEXUALITY my throat started closing up and my heart was racing. Interesting to notice.

I've got to get ready to go to yoga now. I'm still not sure -- and am very intrigued -- by my very handsome and sexy (and presumably straight) yoga teacher. I get a strong sense that he is flirting with me. I don't know if he knows that I'm gay, but I am very titillated by the things he does for me and to me, holding me, touching me, placing his front on my back when I'm bent over, tapping on my thighs... We're in the middle of a room of women, so it's not like he's making the moves on me, he does these same things with them, but there's something going on, there's an energy; I don't think it's just me. Thump-thump, thump-thump; man, I love yoga! And I love crushes, especially reciprocal ones!

the rogge studios drawings

the throne awaits

I have this new obsession of late: drawing, particularly drawing bathrooms, specifically one bathroom. My bathroom. Well, more of a toilet room than a bathroom, because there's no water involved. M&J have three acres of land and have offered to build S and me living quarters. It will generate some income for them while being cheaper rent for us, which are both good things. But what's really exciting about this venture is that it's going to be very green. They're going to purchase two 20-foot containers, or get one 40-footer and cut it in half. S and I will each have our own container as a bedroom/office, with great big doors opening to the outside on one end, most likely overlooking our vegetable garden and Northeast Austin (the property is on top of a hill). We'll also have a regular door on the inside so we won't keep the big doors open all the time, just for parties or when the weather's really nice.

The two containers will be positioned about 20 feet apart from each other, and the space between will be enclosed; this will be our common space. On the front end, we'll mostly likely have a Modrian-type wall of salvaged metal and colored Plexiglas that J can get from his work as a set builder for movies. I was over at their house yesterday and we took a drive through the bone yard to look at the particular stuff that's soon to be thrown out from a past movie project. I'm also hoping that my beloved penny-covered GMC Suburban hood will be incorporated into the front wall.

The back wall of the common space will possibly be Modrian as well, or if we get lucky, will have a sliced in half Airstream trailer incorporated into it. M&J have a couple of Airstreams on their property; one is brand new, beautiful, owned by J's sister's boyfriend; the other is falling apart, old, left with them by a friend who now lives in the Northeast. They're gonna ask if we can have it. That back wall will have the sink and washing machine (under a liftable countertop), next to the shower room (which is opposite the toilet), as well as the cabinets, stove and refrigerator.

At first, when I was drawing my vision of the space, I got my calculations wrong and thought S and I would each have 10 feet of living space (by 8 feet wide by 9.5 feet tall), and at that point I was thinking it would be really cool to build a cob toilet and shower attached to the back of the living quarters. (Cob is basically mud fortified with straw.) But when I realized that we would each have 20 feet of living space -- which seems like too much to me -- I reconfigured the drawings and incorporated the toilet and shower into the back 5 feet of each of the containers, which leaves a 3x5 storage closet for each of us, as well as 15 feet of living/working space.

All along, we've been talking about using composting toilets. M&J have friends in Panama who have a composting toilet system, and S and I have always been interested in that as well. (I should say that I have been interested in it for a long time, and I think S has been as well; I know that he's into it now.) So, I have been reading a very insightful book called The Humanure Handbook. The more I read, the more I redraw the toilet, not because it gets more complicated but because it gets more simple. The people in Panama have a composting toilet system that they bought from a manufacturer (I think). But the Handbook gives instructions on how to make them out of 5-gallon buckets.

Of course, I don't expect everyone to be excited about this. Last night, I went to dinner with my oldest friend in the world (in fact, my girlfriend from seventh grade); she is in town from Dallas to go to the X concert here tonight; she's been friends with Exene Cervenka and John Doe and all of them for years. Anyway, she asked what I was up to, and I very excitedly told her about my composting toilet plans. She said, "You're kidding." When I told her I definitely was not, she said, "Well, I won't be eating at your house!" Joseph Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook warned me about this reaction, and told me that many people are fecophobes. I imagine I'll get a similar reaction from my mother, but whatever.

In my latest drawing, there is a seat with a storage area next to it. There is a 5-gallon bucket attached to a hole under the seat and an extra 5-gallon bucket under that side. The other half of the room has a storage area that's about 6 inches higher than the sitting side. A 5-gallon bucket full of sawdust (or rice hulls, etc.) fits into a hole -- that's what you cover up the poo with instead of drinking water -- and underneath there is space for an extra bucket of sawdust, an extra empty bucket, extra toilet paper, and even a full bucket (with a lid, of course), in the back. There will hopefully be an outside access door from which the full buckets can be retrieved and carried to the compost pile not far away.

J thinks that it'll only take about three months to get the structure livable. We might have to rough it a little bit in terms of the common space, but I think we're okay with that (it's according to how "rough" it's gonna be!). Eventually, we'll have a deck and garden (possibly hydroponic) on the rooftop, both of which will cut down on heat. We're also looking into wind power and solar. I'll post another blog with the recent drawings of "The Rogge Studios," as they're called (because they're on Rogge Lane), but not of the composting toilet drawings because I'm still working on those.